The UK governments Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has called for "urgent action" to be taken in order to protect the country's vital infrastructure from the effects of Climate Change. In particular the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, warned that signals from Wi-Fi networks could be disrupted by "intense rainfall or high temperatures".Existing fibre optic and copper telecommunications networks, which are both being used by ISPs and telecoms operators to carry telephone and broadband internet access services, were also sighted as being at risk from both flooding and related erosion.
Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, said:
"Our economy is built on effective transport and communications networks and reliable energy and water supplies. But the economy cannot grow if there are repeated power failures, or goods cannot be transported because roads are flooded and railways have buckled, or if intense rainfall or high temperatures disrupt Wi-Fi signals.
£200bn is expected to be invested in the UK's infrastructure over the next five years. But if the facilities which support our society cannot cope with floods, droughts, or freezing winters then that money will have been wasted."
"Our economy is built on effective transport and communications networks and reliable energy and water supplies. But the economy cannot grow if there are repeated power failures, or goods cannot be transported because roads are flooded and railways have buckled, or if intense rainfall or high temperatures disrupt Wi-Fi signals.
£200bn is expected to be invested in the UK's infrastructure over the next five years. But if the facilities which support our society cannot cope with floods, droughts, or freezing winters then that money will have been wasted."
Spelman has subsequently called on the owners and operators of infrastructure to include measures that would improve their "climate resilience". The report does not specifically mention other forms of wireless networking ( e.g. WiMAX and LTE ), so we're left to assume that these are at an extremely minimal risk.
Currently the UK is not strictly reliant upon Wi-Fi, although many homes / businesses do have wireless networks to aid the sharing of connectivity and we're one of the largest country's in the world when it comes to the prevalence of public Wi-Fi based internet access Hotspots.
The report itself is actually rather thin on providing any practical recommendations for improving the resilience of Wi-Fi and fibre optic/copper line based infrastructure, except for leaving it all up to the telecommunications operators to resolve.
Defra's Climate Resilient Infrastructure Report (PDF)
http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/climate-resilient-infrastructure-full.pdf
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Comments: 11
wirelesspacmanPosted: 10 May, 2011 - 8:46 AM
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I wonder how much time, effort and tax-payers' money was wasted on that load of rubbish?
Bound to be thin on practical recommendations as they have not got a clue what they are talking about! Presumably, they think that all of this intense rainfall will now be falling inside of buildings if it is going to have such a large impact on wifi, 99% of which is indoors?!? (ok, the 99% is a wild guess, but I dare say it is not that far off)
tonypPosted: 10 May, 2011 - 9:45 AM
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Presumably the rainfall disruption applies to rural WiMax access rather than local indoor WiFi but I can see the point. Heavy rainfall in the path of satellite signals (which are much higher than WiFi - around 12Ghz compared with 2.4/5.?GHz, much shorter wavelength and thus suffers from scatter) does disrupt signal. This may be an issue with satellite based rural internet. I would think that WiMax will also suffer from rainfall attenuation though whether that becomes critical I don't know. Distance between the WiMax nodes may well be an issue.
VMPosted: 10 May, 2011 - 10:06 AM
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UK governments Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - my message to you is "GO BACK YOUR INFANT SCHOOL AND START LEARNING AGAIN, YOU'RE TALKING NONSENSE"
wirelesspacmanPosted: 10 May, 2011 - 10:49 AM
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Have to admit I have not yet seen any adverse impact due to rainfall with our network )even during nasty storms) - and we have a few 10km 5GHz links out there. From memory (could be wrong) rainfall attenuation is only an issue once you go over 10GHz - hence presumably why satellites suffer.
MarkJPosted: 10 May, 2011 - 11:13 AM
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Digital satellite dishes also suffer due to the vibrations caused by heavy rain, especially if their alignment isn't perfect.
dragoneastPosted: 10 May, 2011 - 2:20 PM
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Well I didn't suffer any problems with my long-distance wifi service during last winter (a bit chilly and snowy), nor rainfall storms during last summer (in fact speeds increased and latency reduced but I'm not blaming the weather). I thought trees in leaf were a bigger problem, so she had to find something to do after getting caught-out trying to flog the forests! Perhaps the Govt. could chop down her department instead and save us all money and time.
KylePosted: 10 May, 2011 - 2:28 PM
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Anybody can speculate on an issue. The difficult (and useful) part is advising on the issue. That is to say, whether there is any issue at all.
JBPosted: 12 May, 2011 - 4:57 AM
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It's obvious that none of the commenters here actually read the report, and even clearer that none are technically competent to comment on it.
Should you even glance at the second appendix at who was involved in putting this together, it incorporates *expertise* from *experts*, so while the findings might not appear that interesting to people reading this site, it is of significant interest and relevance to the people providing key services to you.
green guyPosted: 23 August, 2011 - 3:15 PM
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despite not being an expert, i see satellite dish get confused when there is even a weaker rainfall, how much more heavy rainfall. It's because most of the commentators have never been to a tropical region where it rains cats and dogs, (heavily) to destruct even electricity if found to be on the national grid. Climate change is real and we must curb it together. Gone are the days when my mother (less educated use to predict the weather perfectly, but now it has been a grumbling act whenever she does so, coz it always goes opposite to what she says.......
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