Matthew Allcock – Space Weather Consultant and speaker at Storm warning: mitigating the impact of space weather on critical infrastructure

We’re thrilled to have you speak at our Storm warning: mitigating the impact of space weather on critical infrastructure event in June, what are you most looking forward to during the evening?

Hazards Forum events are always a pleasure to be a part of because of the diversity of industries that make up the audience and speakers, covering many of the critical infrastructure sectors of the UK. This will make for a fruitful discussion where the approaches to hazard management from different sectors can be compared and synthesized.

We’d like to know more about your professional life. Please can you give some background of your current role?

I have been working in space weather resilience for around five years now, since graduating from my PhD in solar physics. During that time, I worked in the nuclear energy industry, then in the satellite industry, and now I work across multiple industries in the UK and Europe. In the UK, most of the work related to space weather is done in universities, furthering our understanding of the physical phenomena of space weather and improving our operational modelling capabilities. I am, by choice, operating outside of universities with the hope that, by bridging the gap between academic work and industry needs, I occupy an underserved part of the space weather resilience landscape, hopefully allowing me to have a greater impact in my work.

In your experience, what are the barriers that may hinder the resilience of critical infrastructure to space weather?

Space weather severe enough to damage infrastructure or disrupt critical services is, thankfully, not an everyday occurance. It occurs closer to once a decade or century. This infrequency can create complacency and underinvestment in effective hazard management.

That’s a technical answer. But a perhaps more important and definitely more boring answer is that infrastructure resilience requires coordination between groups of humans with different interests. Scientists need to help policymakers understand the physics of the hazard, policymakers need to learn from infrastructure operators how the hazard would impact their systems, infrastructure operators need to work with manufacturers to understand the potential vulnerabilities, all of this must be overseen by industry regulators, and all in an environment where many seemingly more pressing issues occupy limited time and money. All of this coordination, and more, needs to happen to make progress.

What risks do you foresee in space weather?

Space weather presents a number of risks to modern infrastructure, many of which are currently under-appreciated. The most well-known risks are the high currents that can be induced in electricity transmission networks during severe geomagnetic storms. In the worst case, these could cause power cuts to critical users such as hospitals, airports, and mobile cellular base stations. Additional space weather risks that I foresee are risks to advanced technologies like autonomous vehicles and data centres that power artificial intelligence systems. Elevated levels of radiation caused by space weather may interfere with their safe and secure operation and very little work has been done to plan for and mitigate these risks.

What are the best things about working on space weather? 

In my work, I am motivated to improve the areas of society that I see as falling short of where they could be in a perfect world. One of the ways I see society falling short is our vulnerability to low probability, high severity risks, such as space weather. Working on an under-prioritised risk is one of the best things about it. But I’d be lying if working on a risk from outer space didn’t also excite the sci-fi fan in me!

At the end of our event, we’ll be holding a panel discussion with all four speakers, what will be your burning question for the panel?

The risks from other natural hazards have been managed, with mixed success, for much longer than we have known about the risks from space weather. What can we learn from successful approaches to resilience against other hazards to help improve resilience against space weather?

What do you think the takeaway will be for those attending this event?

Severe space weather is a risk that should be taken seriously by critical infrastructure operators. It may not occur this week or this year, but a resilient society is one that can survive and thrive not just this week or this year, but this decade, this century, and beyond.

To book onto this event, please visit the ICE website.