Five Alarms: Assessing the Vulnerability of US Cellular Communication Infrastructure to Wildfires

Abstract

Natural disasters can wreak havoc on Internet infrastructure. Short term impacts include impediments to first responders and long term impacts include requirements to repair or replace damaged physical components. In this paper, we present an analysis of the vulnerability of cellular communication infrastructure in the US to one type of natural disaster - wildfires. Three data sets are the basis for our study: historical wildfire records, wildfire risk projections, and cellular infrastructure deployment. We utilize the geographic features in each data set to assess the spatial overlap between historical wildfires and cellular infrastructure and to analyze current vulnerability. We find wide variability in the number of cell transceivers that were within wildfire perimeters over the past 18 years. In a focused analysis of the California wildfires of 2019, we find that the primary risk to cellular communication is power outage rather than cellular equipment damage. Our analysis of future risk based on wildfire hazard potential identifies California, Florida and Texas as the three states with the largest number of cell transceivers at risk. Importantly, we find that many of the areas at high risk are quite close to urban population centers, thus outages could have serious impacts on a large number of cell users. We believe that our study has important implications for governmental communication assurance efforts and for risk planning by cell infrastructure owners and service providers.