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Severe Space Weather Events Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts: A Workshop Report (2008) / Chapter Skim
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3 Space Weather and Society
Pages 29-34

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From page 29...
... SPACE WEATHER, INFRASTRUCTURE AND SOCIETY Much of the discussion focused on various types of infrastructuresuch as those for communications, electric power, water, banking and finance, and transportationand the effects on the nation following their disruption for extended periods. Of significant note is the increasing interconnectedness and complexity of most infrastructure, together with ever expanding services dependent on infrastructure.
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From page 30...
... La Porte said that understanding the consequences resulting from interdependencies of infrastructure disrupted during significant space weather is essential. Caverly stated that although systems may be well designed themselves, there is a need to consider the "system of systems" concept and to examine the associated dependencies in detail.
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From page 31...
... As the nation's infrastructures and services increase in complexity and interdependence over time, a major outage of any one infrastructure will have an increasingly widespread impact. For example, the dependence of nearly all critical services on information technology is ever increasing, and the flow of information is itself dependent on communications infrastructure and a reliable supply of electric power.
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From page 32...
... In this context, the issues that are of particular importance for management are sustaining policy attention to the issue, developing appropriate regulatory responses, and obtaining technical design options that can minimize or eliminate disruptions due to rare extreme events, such as space weather events. RESEARCH ON COMPLEX, ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS La Porte acknowledged that the first response to the prospect of such technical and organizational disruptions is to try to learn to predict anomalies and extreme events, in short, to study space weather.
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From page 33...
... Institutional learning is generally done through trial and error and in small-scale settings before being expanded to larger-scale settings. But La Porte stressed that a different kind of research is needed to understand integrated technical and socioeconomic systems, including communications, electric power, transportation, logistics, computation, and technical components operating in situations where the totality of the system cannot be modeled.
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From page 34...
... 34 SEVERE SPACE WEATHER EVENTS -- UNDERSTANDING SOCIETAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS in this workshop session emphasized the importance of devoting greater attention to technological, institutional, and management responses to these events, given what is known about space weather events and their potential to have increasingly broader impacts on both technical and socioeconomic systems.
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Key Terms

  • weather events
  • severe space
  • weather event
  • economic impacts
  • porte emphasized

  • critical infrastructure
  • carrington event
  • significant space
  • workshop session
  • government services

  • power grids
  • geomagnetic events
  • extreme events
  • extended periods
  • extreme space

  • additional space
  • study space
  • unexpected space
  • weather protection
  • hamper robust

  • social responses
  • infrastructure sectors
  • power supplies
  • public sector
  • water due

  • makers inevitably
  • designers plan
  • emergency response
  • budgetary choices
  • adequate crisis


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