Threats to UK-Ireland International Submarine Telecoms Cables from Natural/Adversary/Human Attack

Abstract

Protection of Critical National Infrastructure has taken on increased importance and attention in recent years.  With recent world and geo-political events, the importance of maintaining our 

International Interconnectors has increased dramatically.  Whilst there are many challenges in monitoring and protecting on-land infrastructure (water, electricity, oil, gas, telecoms), there are particular areas of risk and interest associated with the sub-sea digital network interconnects that service the UK and Ireland.  Moreover, the UK and Ireland serve as landing points for a number of strategically important communications interconnects for the rest of Europe.  The importance of this Critical Infrastructure to the economy of UK and Ireland cannot be overstated.  This presentation will give a summary overview of some of the challenges that exist and solicit some suggestions for addressing them.

Short Bio

Gerard is a Full Professor in Telecommunications Engineering and has been Head of School of Computing Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich from 2016-2023 which involved a range of senior management roles and responsibilities covering Teaching, Research, Innovation and Outreach. He holds a PhD in Self-Stabilising Protocols from Ulster University, aspects of which were completed with UCL and one of the founding Fathers of the Internet (Professor Jon Postel) whilst a Visiting Research Scientist at the DARPA/University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute in Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles. Within his academic career, areas of research include Wireless Sensor Clouds, UAV for Disaster Response Communications, ICT for the Rural Economy, delay-sensitive protocols, and energy-aware autonomic networking and IoT-edge computing. He has attracted several £millions of external research and commercial funding and has advised governments on the allocation of funding to large-scale projects valued in total at approximately £3 billion. His industrial collaborations have included companies such as BT, Intel, IBM, Aviva, Ericsson, Siemens, InfoSys, Wipro, and SAP. Professor Parr is an invited member of the EPSRC Peer Review College. His academic research collaborations include MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, USC-ISI Los Angeles, University of Florida, University College London, Southampton, Surrey, QMUL, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Oxford, St Andrews, Exeter, Lincoln, Lancaster , Cambridge, Beijing University of Posts &Telecommunications (BUPT), Tsinghua University, Peking University and Indian Institutes of Technology in Mumbai, Madras, Kanpur, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mandi and IISc Bangalore. He was previously appointed as a Visiting Professor tothe Science Foundation Ireland/CTVR at Trinity College Dublin and to the Emirates-BT Innovation Centre (EBTIC) at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi- UAE. He was previously Chief Scientific Advisor to Project Kelvin, an initiative led by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) on behalf of itself and the Irish Department for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR). This led to the installation of a submarine telecommunications cable connecting the north coast of Northern Ireland and Dublin to a transatlantic submarine cable linking North America with Southport in England, and onwards to continental Europe. He has been International Scientific Advisor to the UK EPSRC National Centre for Doctoral Training in Communications Engineering at the University of Bristol. He was appointed as Senior Guest Editor for prestigious IEEE Journal on Selected Areas of Communications (JSAC) for a Special Issue on Communications Challenges and Dynamics in UAVs. He has extensive experience of working with developing economies, in particular, India, where he was the UK Academic co-ordinator for the major EPSRC-DST India-UK Advanced Technology Centre in Next Generation Networks Systems and Services which was the largest collaboration of its kind between UK and India in the ICT sector attracting total investment of over £20 million and also helped establish a Virtual Graduate Research School for 67 PhD students under the UKIERI Programme. Presently Professor Parr is working on the development of the East of England Smart Emerging Technologies Institute-SETI (one of the recommendations from the UK BEIS Science Innovation Audit) with colleagues from Essex, Cambridge, UEA and BT Adastral. SETI will look at innovations in 5G, IoT, AI-Big Data/Cloud Computing and Testbeds across a number of sectors, including Energy, Intelligent Manufacturing, AgriTech and Smart-Supply Chains. Gerard was awarded an MBE in Queens New Year Honours for 2018 for contributions to Telecommunications Infrastructure in Northern Ireland. During January 2020 Prof Parr was elected to the Strategic Advisory Committee for the UK Government UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) ICT Programme to assist with strategic developments, funding panels and identification of funding priorities. Most recently Gerard has been successful in attracting Co-I funding for a 5-year EPSRC Next Stage Digital Economy Hub called DIGIT (Digital-Innovation-Growth-Impact-Transformation) valued over £12 million which will explore methodologies and business impact of Digital Transformation in Large Organisations. During 2021 Gerard was also successful as PI to attract £1.4 million funding for the “UK-India Future Networks Initiative” with IISc Bangalore, IIT Delhi, UCL, Surrey, Southampton, and BT. Most recently in December 2022 he was successful as a Co-PI on a bid to UKRI-ESRC concerning Digital Technology in Teacher Agency. The £5.3 million fund will support a total of nine projects. He is also a Member of the UKRI-EPSRC Digital Security & Resilience Advisory Group.

Venue

Large Conference Room, O’Reilly Institute