Infrastructure protectionU.S. municipal data centers prepare to cope with sea-level rise
The National Academy of Sciences says that 316 coastal cities in the United States are expected to be affected by sea-level rise within the next few decades. Those responsible for infrastructure maintenance are now considering how they can be better prepared for this eventuality. Among their tasks is the protection of data centers which handle much of the world’s information.
According to the Multimillennial Sea-level Commitment of Global Warming study, commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences, 316 coastal cities in the United States are expected to be affected by sea-level rise within the next few decades. Those responsible for infrastructure maintenance are now considering how they can be better prepared for this eventuality. Among their tasks is the protectionof data centers which handle much of the world’s information.
As Government Technology reports, the projections of sea-level rise (with a “locked-in” rise expected at more than four feet over the next century) has many within the IT industry concerned.
Benjamin Strauss, the vice president for climate impacts and director of the Program on Sea Level Rise at Climate Central, recently used his interpretations of the climate change data to predict the impact on data center operations throughout the country.
These predictions also follow in the wake of 2012 Hurricane Sandy, which pounded much of the East Coast. In several cases following the days-long blackouts of that storm, data center operators ran low on generator fuel and ultimately had to shut down servers and move things elsewhere.
“If you are thinking about the vulnerability of a data center, you have to think not only about the location of the servers, but also about the location of everything else — the cooling equipment, backup generators, etc. If you want to make a facility flood-proof, you have to make all it critical components flood-proof as well.”
Strauss suggests that center operators think broadly when creating contingency plans for flooding or gradual sea-level rise, since “elements outside the data center itself can be the data center’s downfall.”
Some at-risk cities that have plans in the works include Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is working on a “comprehensive climate change vulnerability assessment” that the city expects to have completed by late 2014, and reaches out as far as 2070. Galveston, Texas is moving its data center away from hurricane damage zones to a spot about 250 miles inland, and Los Angeles is preparing its data center to be earthquake-braced.
