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 · Faculty
Faculty of Technology and Digital Systems
Digital systems fail where they meet the physical world: a dish loses a pass, a cable lands in one valley, an exploited vulnerability stays unpatched past its due date, a model scores well on a benchmark and badly in use.
How its disciplines connect
The map
DepartmentDisciplineNexus Standard taught here
Build a twin of any place
Search any place or open the world; the layers and generators follow the faculty's subjects on the planet map, the globe and in 3D.
Technology and Digital SystemsAny placeTwin builder
- Terrain 0 to 245 m
- 4 satellite dishes
- 74 communication masts and towers
- 12 telephone exchanges
- 7 data centres and cable landing stations
- 12 aerodromes
- 1 telecom offices
- Communication line 161 km
- 729 known exploited vulnerabilities since 2023-10-17
- Night-time lights, VIIRS day-night band: read live when the 3D twin opens
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.
Places4
Layers5
iCredits
- Terrain Surface height in whole metres on a grid of about 240 by 370 metres, read from one overview of the 30 m product at build time; 0 at sea. Produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved. read 2026-10-17. Estimate: A digital surface model: trees and roofs are in the heights. Relief exaggeration is printed on the stage.
- Ground infrastructure Satellite dishes, communication masts and towers, telephone exchanges, data centres and cable landing stations, telecom offices and aerodromes, each as one point with its tags as mapped. © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. data as of 2026-06-01. Estimate: Points as mapped by contributors: a missing feature means it is not mapped, not that it does not exist; operator and height tags are kept as tagged.
- Communication cables Submarine and terrestrial communication cables mapped by OpenStreetMap contributors inside the box, clipped to it, with their length in kilometres. © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. data as of 2026-07-15. Estimate: OpenStreetMap-mapped cables at the extract date; never a complete or authoritative cable inventory.
- Known exploited vulnerabilities Catalogue entries added in the last three years with six fields: CVE id, vendor or project, product, date added, due date and the known ransomware campaign use flag. Source: CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog (CC0 1.0), snapshot 2026-10-17, catalogue version 2026.10.16. read 2026-10-17. Estimate: A dated snapshot, never a live or complete vulnerability feed; vendor and product names are the vendors' own marks shown as data; no CISA logo or DHS seal.
- Night-time lights, VIIRS day-night band Night-time radiance for the date shown, draped on the terrain, as a proxy for where settlements and sites draw power. VIIRS SNPP day-night band at-sensor radiance, NASA, via NASA GIBS, with the product date. Live: this page requests gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov when the layer is opened; the data date is printed with it. 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). Estimate: Satellite radiance with moonlight and cloud not corrected in this product; lights are a proxy, never a measurement of electricity supply, access or outages.
Why this place: One box of about 57 by 55 kilometres holds Goonhilly Earth Station (the ground segment of satellite communications since 1962 and a deep-space ground station today), the Porthcurno valley where transatlantic telegraph and later fibre cables came ashore, the Culdrose air station and the telecom masts of a rural peninsula, so the ground segment, cable landings and the resilience of positioning, navigation, timing and communication can be taught in one place. Data quality: OpenStreetMap coverage of the United Kingdom is complete for masts, dishes and named sites, Copernicus DEM GLO-30 covers the terrain in four tiles, and VIIRS night lights show where the digital economy draws power. It connects to the Space systems, space weather and navigation, cybersecurity, Digital public infrastructure and digital identity and Data infrastructure, compute and semiconductors disciplines of the atlas.
Flat plan of the same data: relief as contours from the inline grid, the mapped ground infrastructure by kind, the mapped cables and the numbers below. The 3D twin opens on devices that can draw it, once its data and code have been checked.
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 the United Kingdom and Ireland
Night-time lights and population density, the footprint of electrified, connected activity, over the United Kingdom and Ireland.
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Layers 2
Connected activity
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Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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Connected activity, framed on the United Kingdom and Ireland.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
From a dataset to an incident: where risk enters an AI system's life and where it is caught
An AI system's risk is set at four gates: the data it learns from, the evaluation it must pass, the share of its use that is monitored, and the time it takes to roll back. A system with a weak gate anywhere carries that weakness into every deployment.
Sources: NIST, Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0) (2023); Gebru and others, Datasheets for datasets (2021); OECD AI Incidents Monitor (2026-10-17); ISO/IEC 42001:2023, Information technology, Artificial intelligence, Management system (2023).
Departments and their disciplines
Each card names the department's disciplines and its open courses.
Disciplines of the faculty
Each discipline once, in its department.
How Technology and Digital Systems is organised, as a process you can run
Press Play to run this process from this page's own data.
Standards and evidence, with 5 related topics
Nexus Standards the faculty teaches toward
The Nexus Standards areas whose standards the faculty's disciplines teach toward, with the number of standards and disciplines in each.
Where the field is moving
Emerging areas, the technologies changing practice and the bodies whose work sets the field's methods.
What is changing now
The newest developments cited on the faculty's discipline pages, sources checked on 16 October 2026.
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 11 disciplines, each with its source and date. Open the research hub
Artificial intelligence and machine learning, AI safety and evaluation, Robotics and autonomous systems, AI assurance and audit, Data infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, Quantum technologies, Cybersecurity and digital resilience, Digital public infrastructure and digital identity, Space systems, space weather and navigation, Operational technology and cyber-physical security, Positioning, navigation and timing resilience
Where to start, and where it leads
The faculty's entry course, then its flagship pathways and the Academy flagship in Nexus-Based Risk Management.
Courses of the faculty
Courses whose primary discipline is in this faculty.
Where these subjects are practised
Learning and connections
Labs used in the faculty's courses
| Lab | What you do in it | Courses using it |
|---|---|---|
| Network lab | Build dependency graphs, find critical nodes, trace cascades | 2 |
| GeoAI lab | Apply Earth observation and machine learning to open imagery | 1 |
Programmes that span faculties
Each programme joins disciplines from more than one faculty under an institute of the Academy, and appears on every faculty it spans.
Institutes that convene the faculty
Across the ecosystem
Take part in Technology and Digital Systems
Start from who you are.
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 faculty's courses?
Key terms
Faculty of Technology and Digital Systems
The faculty studies how artificial intelligence, computing, cyber, space and autonomous systems work, fail and are secured.
Department
A body of related disciplines within the Faculty of Technology and Digital Systems, with its own courses and pathways.
Primary discipline
The discipline a course mainly teaches; a course may also teach up to two other disciplines.
Ground segment
The dishes, stations, networks and operations centres on Earth that control satellites and carry their traffic.
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 the Faculty of Technology and Digital Systems
Start in one department
Each department lists its disciplines, courses and pathways; each discipline its scope, labs, technology and key terms.