The risks and impacts of space weather: Policy recommendations and initiatives
Abstract Space weather affects global technological systems and societies. Space weather, or the dynamic conditions on the Sun and in the space environment and their impacts on technological systems, can produce coronal mass ejections, solar energetic particles, and geomagnetic disturbances. These space weather events can cause extreme currents in the electric grid, widespread blackouts, and phone and internet communication failures both in space and within the Earth's atmosphere. Severe space weather can damage satellites used for global positioning, communications, and weather forecasting. It also creates a risk of radiation exposure to astronauts and commercial airline crews and passengers. Accurate forecast knowledge of the space weather threat and timing of events is critical to planning and preparation to minimize socioeconomic impacts. This paper reviews the scope of the space weather threat on the global community today. It describes current international and US public policy initiatives to mitigate risk to infrastructure, public safety, and human life. It examines recent international reports and US federal disaster reduction plans to meet these challenges and provides recommendations to increase public awareness and implement public policies to prepare, prevent, and recover from possible catastrophic failures of commercial and government infrastructures caused by a major space weather event.
Antifragility analysis and measurement framework for systems of systems
The twenty-first century is defined by the social and technical hazards we face. A hazardous situation is a condition, or event, that threatens the well-being of people, organizations, societies, environments, and property. The most extreme of the hazards are considered X-Events and are an exogenous source of extreme stress to a system. X-Events can also be the unintended outputs of a system with both positive (serendipitous) and negative (catastrophic) consequences. Systems can vary in their ability to withstand these stress events. This ability exists on a continuum of fragility that ranges from fragile (degrading with stress), to robust (unchanged by stress), to antifragile (improving with stress). The state of the art does not include a method for analyzing or measuring fragility. Given that “what we measure we will improve,” the absence of a measurement approach limits the effectiveness of governance in making our systems less fragile and more robust if not antifragile. The authors present an antifragile system simulation model, and propose a framework for analyzing and measuring antifragility based on system of systems concepts. The framework reduces a multidimensional concept of fragility into a two-dimensional continuous interval scale.
Organic geochemical characteristics and depositional setting of Tertiary organic-rich sediments from onshore Penyu Basin, Malaysia
Due to the poor knowledge of the organic facies characteristics of the eastern Chenor Pahang has made it remain an untapped potential in the Penyu Basin. Therefore, detailed geochemical and petrographic characterization of the Tertiary organic facies of the eastern Chenor area of the Penyu Basin was carried out to characterized its organic matter (OM) source input. Towards achieving the goal, this study focuses on determination of organic matters richness, type and origin as related to their paleoenvironmental conditions of the carbonaceous mudstone and shale using organic petrography combined with organic and inorganic geochemistry. The sedimentary succession is characterized by fine to coarse grained sandstone occurring in association with carbonaceous mudstone and shale in a predominantly fining upward sequence within a lacustrine environment. These facies are generally enriched in organic matter as indicated by the TOC results, hydrocarbon yield (S2) and extractible organic matter (EOM), suggesting significant hydrocarbon generation potential for the area.