Illustrative: packages on a board with routed traces carrying clocked signals, or a data hall of racks and their status lights
Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium · Infrastructure, Energy and Industry · Department of Utility Networks
Networks, cables, exchanges and data centres that carry the digital economy
Telecommunications and digital infrastructure
The digital economy rests on a physical layer: masts, fibre, exchanges, data centres and the subsea cables that carry most intercontinental traffic.
- Department
- Department of Utility Networks
- Courses
- In preparation
- Levels
- In development
- Labs
- In development
- Access, mobile and backbone networks
- Subsea cables, landing stations and repair capacity
- Internet exchange points and routing
- Data centres, power and cooling
- Satellite communications
- Dependence on power and timing
- Network redundancy and route diversity
- Emergency communications
- Regulation of telecom resilience
Build a twin of any place
Search any place or open the world; the layers and generators follow telecommunications and digital infrastructure on the planet map, the globe and in 3D.
- Terrain 0 to 523 m
- 83,815 buildings in the box
- 5,085 footprints in the core, 2,796 with an estimated height
- Roads 176 km
- Rail 99 km
- 57 substations
- 4 port
- 2 airport
- 5 hospitals
- 8 railway stations
- 4 water works
- 2 power plants, 202 MW
Drag to move, right drag or Shift with a drag to turn and tilt, Ctrl with the wheel to zoom. Keyboard: arrows move, Shift with arrows turn and tilt, + and – zoom, 0 resets, V steps through the views, Escape clears.
Flat plan of the same data. The 3D twin opens on devices that can draw it, once its data and code have been checked; the numbers are the same either way.
The boundaries, names and designations shown do not imply any judgement on the legal status of any territory, or any endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. Countries: Natural Earth (public domain).
Connected activity in Egypt and the Nile Delta
Night-time lights and population density, the footprint of electrified, connected activity, over Egypt and the Nile Delta.
The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.
Layers 2
Connected activity
Keyboard, with the map focused
Hold Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll to zoom
Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
Loading the latest NASA imagery.
Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.
Connected activity, framed on Egypt and the Nile Delta.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date. They are indicators, not assessments of any place.
Data: NASA GIBS · ASTER GDEM · Blue Marble · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Natural Earth · NASA EONETSources and licences
- We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- VIIRS Black Marble night-time lights, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; distributed by the NASA Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive and Distribution System (LAADS DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University. 2018. Gridded Population of the World, Version 4 (GPWv4): Population Density, Revision 11. NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). doi:10.7927/H49C6VHW. CC BY 4.0
- VIIRS near-real-time products (flood, land surface temperature, snow cover, corrected reflectance), NASA LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA (ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003, NASA LP DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). Cite as: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003. doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. NASA open data
- Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Public domain
- © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via NASA GIBS (coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). ODbL
- Blue Marble, NASA Earth Observatory; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- Context on the globe and flat map: coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names from NASA GIBS reference layers (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Blue Marble imagery as an optional base; 3D terrain and the elevation read-out from the ASTER GDEM elevation colour index (5 m to 200 m classes, exaggerated for legibility). Boundaries are drawn as published and imply no position on any territory.
- Globe: MapLibre GL JS 6.9.1, BSD-3-Clause, © MapLibre contributors.
- Live events: NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET); events are indicative and keep their original source links.
- NASA GIBS: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
- Optional layers (3 sources in the layer list: live, forecast, observed and context) print their provider credit on the map and here when switched on; forecasts are model output and derived indices are estimates.
Layers and dates
- Night-time lights, daily: VIIRS Black Marble (VNP46A2), NASA LAADS DAAC · 12 Oct 2026
- Population density, 2020: Population: CIESIN, Columbia University, Gridded Population of the World v4.11 (2018), NASA SEDAC, CC BY 4.0 · static
- True colour: VIIRS NOAA-20 corrected reflectance, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
The subject, methods and measures and debates and bodies
The field and its scope
For network operators, data centre and cable owners, regulators and resilience planners who need to understand how access, backbone, subsea and satellite networks fail, how route diversity and repair capacity are measured, and how resilience obligations are set.
Quantities and units
Methods and their limits
Each method is listed with what it assumes and where it fails.
What the field debates
Bodies that set practice, and the data they publish
Bodies and standards are named so learners can find and apply their published work; the Academy teaches their use and links to the publisher, and no affiliation is implied.
From one fibre path to minutes of downtime: route diversity, backup power and availability
A single route between two points has an availability; physically disjoint routes multiply the chance that one survives; a site's backup power decides whether a grid outage reaches the network at all; and the downtime minutes a year that result are what a service commitment and a regulator count.
Sources: Durairajan et al., InterTubes: a study of the US long-haul fiber-optic infrastructure (2015); Bueger and Liebetrau, Protecting hidden infrastructure: the security politics of the global submarine data cable network (2021); Dainotti et al., Analysis of country-wide internet outages caused by censorship (2011); Uptime Institute, Annual Outage Analysis 2024 (2024).
At a glance, hub and courses
Telecommunications and digital infrastructure at a glance
risksacademy.cominfrastructure-energydiscipline
- Open, 0
- In preparation, 0
- Subtopics, 9
Research and tools
Research and preprints as they are published, by discipline, with the faculty's other tools.
The hub lists the newest research and preprints for Telecommunications and digital infrastructure, each with its source and date. Open the research hub
Courses in this discipline
Courses for this discipline are in development; until they open, study it through the connected courses and open lessons below.
The course catalogue lists every open course of the Academy.
How Telecommunications and digital infrastructure is taught, as a process you can run
Press Play to run this process from this page's own data.
Practice, learning and connections
How technology helps and what risk it brings
Achievements in this discipline
Course achievements
One for each course with this as its primary discipline, earned when you pass the course's assessed activities.
An achievement is a record of the learning completed and assessed here. How recognition works.
Where the subject is practised
A field platform page on this subject is in development.
The two Foundry systems where it is practised
- FoundryNXS-NET systemCommunications networks must stay up under outage or attackContinuity room, Topology room
- NXS-SIG systemNetworks depend on timing and spectrumSpectrum room
Foundry system pages describe what each system and its rooms are designed to do; the courses teach the methods these systems apply.
Across the ecosystem
Take part in Infrastructure, Energy and Industry
Start from who you are.
Core references and where to begin
Start with Starosielski, then Durairajan, then Sunak.
Questions, answers and key terms
Is study here free?
What does completing a course give me?
Where do the data and the places come from?
How do I take part beyond the courses in telecommunications and digital infrastructure?
Key terms
Subsea cable
A fibre-optic cable laid on the seabed that carries most intercontinental data traffic.
Internet exchange point
A facility where networks interconnect to exchange traffic directly.
Route diversity
Carrying traffic over physically separate paths so that one cut does not stop the service.
Data centre tier
A classification of a data centre's redundancy in power and cooling.
Contribute evidence from this page.
Reports is the Consortium's quarterly publication. What you know about this subject can become evidence, a case or a correction in the next edition, credited to you and published under CC BY 4.0 where it is your own work.
Around Telecommunications and digital infrastructure
Prepare with a related course
Open courses in connected disciplines teach the methods this discipline will build on.