Climate risk study for telecommunications and data center services: Report prepared for the general services administration

This report presents an initial step toward understanding how climate change may disrupt the telecommunications and data center service sectors. It then highlights a number of suggested recommendations and adaptation options for disaster risk reduction (DRR) from around the world, including some case studies of early implementation actions by telecommunications companies to build resilience.

The document summarizes the main risks as follows: climate risk is business risk; climate change poses both dramatic and subtle challenges; global supply chains present a range of global climate risks; infrastructure risks are better understood than supply chain risks; a trend toward sharing and consolidating infrastructure reduces redundancy and contributes to climate risk.

It further highlights a number of suggested adaptation options from around the world, including some case studies of early implementation actions by telecommunications companies to build resilience. The report however states that many adaptation actions remain untested or poorly documented and emphasizes that it is critical to explore adaptation solutions, first by framing climate risks in the language of business and then collaborating with key experts representing the engineering, technological, and operational aspects of both sectors to discuss climate impacts in the short and far terms.