The Resilience of Internet Infrastructures in Pacific Northwest to Earthquakes [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The Resilience of Internet Infrastructures in Pacific Northwest to Earthquakes [pdf]

pages.uoregon.edu

96 pointsluu8 comments

This is very cool work. Nice to see the adults in charge somewhere, planning for managing and mitigating anticipatable disasters that haven't happened yet. Much better than disaster mitigation after the fact.

Also quite practical, as Mt. Rainier, for example, is expected to blow its top in the geological immediate future (highest res possible is 5k years per pixel, so to speak).

I don't think all that many people realize how techtonically active the PacNW/VeryBroaderSeattleArea is: there are volcanoes everywhere, and we had one essentially light off a nuke within itself just a handful of decades ago.

As an old geology professor of mine used to say: "Mankind exists by geologic consent only."

Probably even before Mt. Rainier goes the Pacific Northwest is going to experience one of if not the largest earthquake in the continental US in hundreds of years. The fault up there makes ours down in California look like a child’s toy.

We’re talking 1 in 3 chance in the next 50 years.

Big one may also trigger Mt. Rainier. We may get a 2-4-1 combo

Just need to time a combo blocker to counter effectively.

Internet infra won't be even close to a concern in the big one. I mean sure you've got some 911 infra and first responder stuff tied into that, and they have some backup radios, towers, and generators.

But it won't matter when there's a life-threatening situation on every block. Unchecked fires with no water lines to put them out. Trains & trucks unable to get in or out with provisions, overwhelmed hospitals, zero police presence. You'll have to drive from downtown Portland to Salem in order to cross the Willamette, and I have no idea what'll happen to the I-5 corridor.

PNW has been proactive in enforcing its code on big buildings/new construction, and kudos to them. But if you live in the area, be prepared to leave and not come back for a long time.

Source: father is a lifelong building inspector in one of the larger PNW cities. They've been wargaming this stuff for decades, and it ain't pretty even in best-case scenarios.

> Unchecked fires with no water lines to put them out.

What are modern building materials like at large scale ? Are firestorms a possibility ?

> To address these issues, we design ShakeNet: a framework to study the impacts of earthquake-induced shaking on the Internet infrastructure.

Appears to be distinct from existing[0] seismic sensing-related things[1] called ShakeNet. (Cool paper, kinda wish they had Googled that name before deciding on it!)

[0] https://www.usgs.gov/publications/shakenet-a-portable-wirele... (2015)

[1] https://shakenet.raspberryshake.org/

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