When we examine the impacts of space weather on society, do we really understand the risks? Can past experiences reliably predict what will happen in the future? As the complexity of technology increases, there is the potential for it to become more fragile, allowing for a single point of failure to bring down the entire system. Take the Global Positioning System (GPS) as an example. GPS positioning, navigation, and timing have become an integral part of daily life, supporting transportation and communications systems vital to the aviation, merchant marine, cargo, cellular phone, surveying, and oil exploration industries. Everyday activities such as banking, mobile phone operations, and even the control of power grids are facilitated by the accurate timing provided by GPS. Understanding the risks of space weather to GPS and the many economic sectors reliant upon it, as well as how to build resilience, was the focus of a policy workshop organized by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and held on 13–14 October 2010 in Washington, D. C. The workshop brought together a select group of policy makers, space weather scientists, and GPS experts and users. Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary for policy development in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, kicked off the meeting by stressing that authorities should see GPS and resilience through an all-hazards lens rather than plan for each emergency scenario on a case-by-case basis. Whether a GPS signal error or disruption is caused by a solar storm, an intentional jammer, or some other source, government and industries need to plan to respond to the incident and restore capability as quickly as possible, although, Alikhan remarked, “The number of potential scenarios is infinite, and we have neither the time nor resources to plan against them.” Alikhan suggested that risk managers conceptualize the scope of critical assets in need of protecting through a resilience and risk analysis framework. He recommended that decision makers take an inventory of all functions provided for by their institutions“ use of GPS. Next, through risk-informed prioritization, planners can ascertain whether a backup is really needed for any services provided by GPS. “In this fiscal environment,” Alikhan said, “we will need to shrink the haystack, or size of the problem, in order to be effective.” Because the interdependencies of critical infrastructures are not fully appreciated by the public and private sectors, he stressed that a mix of governmental, commercial, and international stakeholders should develop plans and procedures to make systems more resilient. The remainder of the workshop was organized around discussions in three sessions: (1) identifying the vulnerability of GPS technologies and services to space weather, (2) identifying how this vulnerability affects users who depend on GPS, and (3) developing opportunities and policies for building resilience. In the first session, participants agreed that the vulnerability of GPS needs to be defined for different segments (e.g., satellites, signals, users). While some understanding of user needs exists, the definition of user requirements needs more clarification because space weather events will affect some technologies more than others. Also, a threat assessment would be valuable to best understand how severe the impacts might be and what mitigation options are available. With the recent news that Google™ is building self-driving robotic cars that depend on GPS, trying to capture possible future vulnerabilities is extremely challenging. During a debate on how much to stress the impact of a solar flare as massive as the 1859 Carrington event, many warned that while the public should be made aware of such a potential occurrence, it should not govern planning, since such a doomsday scenario is uncertain and expected to happen only very infrequently. When discussing in the second session how users of GPS are affected, participants discovered that communicating with GPS stakeholders and users is a challenge because many do not understand the impacts of adverse space weather. In particular, many of the service providers and end users of GPS were not in business during the previous solar maximum and therefore are not familiar with space weather hazards. To help remedy this, outreach approaches were discussed, and some participants argued that the space weather community should anticipate the needs of the users. Others instead urged the space weather community to deal only with the service providers—not end users—and ask them rather than tell them what they need. Despite this debate, there was broad agreement that space weather researchers should develop better measurements and predictions of the ionosphere. In addition, participants agreed that scintillation specifications and predictions would be useful to many users of GPS. Improved predictions would be possible by installing more dual-frequency stations and scintillation monitors, they noted. The workshop concluded with a discussion of policy options for building resilience. Participants debated what measures could be taken, such as developing new policies, investing in research and development, changing industry practices, and public and private sector collaboration. Scott Pace, director of George Washington University“s Space Policy Institute, stressed in his presentation that stakeholders and disaster planners should focus on three aspects: prediction, detection, and mitigation. Better space physics/heliophysics science is needed, and it was recommended that this be a top priority for the Solar and Space Physics decadal survey, which sets future nationwide research targets and is currently under review by the U.S. National Research Council. Findings and recommendations from the workshop will be published in a report by AMS. The results will be widely distributed to various stakeholders, including policy makers, GPS service providers, federal agencies, research communities, and international organizations. Genene Fisher is a senior policy fellow in the American Meteorological Society's Policy Program. E-mail: [email protected]
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