Infrastructure Threats
Resilient Societies is a catalyst for action on threats to infrastructure resilience. According to our risk assessments, multiple threats have potential to take down electric grids and other interdependent infrastructures for months or years, causing catastrophic economic, societal, and environmental impacts: pandemic, electromagnetic pulse, physical attack, and cyber-attack. Solar storms, physical attack, and cyber-attack have already caused blackouts in North America and Europe. In September 2017, North Korea threatened nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States. For these high-consequence threats, we significantly influence government processes, industry action, and community preparedness to assure the security and recoverability of the electric grid and supporting infrastructures.
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NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captures February 17, 2014 western-limb CME
Case Study: In March 1989, a CME and resulting "solar storm" caused an 11-hour blackout in Quebec, Canada. During other solar storms, transformers at generation plants and transmission substations have overheated and prematurely failed. A 2012 article in the journal Space Weather estimated the chance each decade of a catastrophic solar storm is 12 percent. |
Pandemic
Electric utilities depend on grid operators, line crews, technicians, and other highly trained and specialized staff. Supply chains for critical components such as large power transformers extend overseas. Both human staffing and supply chains are vulnerable to disruption from pandemics. In 2010, a report by NERC and the U.S. Department of Energy officially recognized the pandemic threat to America's electric grid.
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Electromagnetic PulseMan-made electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from nuclear weapons and naturally-occurring solar storms can take down electric power grids. In 2008, the Congressional EMP Commission determined that "EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences...It has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructures and thus to the very fabric of US society..."
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Physical Attackn April 16, 2013 unknown parties attacked the Metcalf substation in San Jose, California, a critical electric grid facility providing power to Silicon Valley and the city of San Francisco, nearly causing a catastrophic blackout for the region. According to a leaked engineering analysis performed by the U.S. Government, an attack on just nine grid substations could bring down the U.S. electric grid for over a year.
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Cyber-AttackIn November 2014, Admiral Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, disclosed that foreign nations could take down the electric grid with cyber-attack. In 2005, the U.S. Congress passed legislation requiring that “communications networks” for the grid be protected against cyber-attack. Six sets of NERC cybersecurity standards have been approved by FERC without implementing this law.
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