CLIMATE CHANGE: Implications for the subsea cable industry 

Rebecca Firth, the author of the paper, is a key part of OceanIQ's Route Engineering team. She has a unique insight into cable route design following her offshore experience in telecoms installation, giving her an additional operational perspective when engineering routes, completing desktop studies and reviewing survey data - taking into consideration the complete set of risks faced by the cable system of its lifetime.

Connect with Rebecca on LinkedIn

The accelerating impacts of climate change pose significant risks to the resilience and stability of subsea cables and their landing stations.

Climate-induced phenomena—such as rising sea levels, increased frequency and intensity of storms, storm surges and coastal erosion —threaten subsea cable networks.

This paper will describe the changes to human activities as a result of climate change and adaptive strategies for enhancing the resilience of subsea cables against climate-induced impacts.

This includes increased armouring and/or cable burial protection at shore-ends where coastal erosion is increasing, or in areas newly exposed to fishing activity.

There is a need to integrate climate resilience into cable route planning, and thought should be given to both short-term events as well as long-term impacts.

Multiple geospatial datasets should be integrated, and future routing should consider oceanographic, atmospheric and geological components on a case-by-case basis.