Europe's unprecedented summer heatwave has shattered temperature records, with forecasts predicting another wave to hit this week. These extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common and disruptive to daily operations, leaving core digital infrastructure vulnerable to outages and downtime.
When intense heat causes electrical components to fail, it can shut down IoT software across crucial industries, including energy, transport, and healthcare. As temperatures become the new normal, resilience must be prioritized at the very start, to ensure that critical systems remain online.
The impact of IoT downtime caused by extreme heat is widespread – the IoT is everywhere, underpinning critical industries like energy, transport, and healthcare, sharing data from sensors, monitors, trackers, and more. With global connections forecast to reach 40 billion+ in 2034, our daily reliance on the IoT will continue to grow.
Climate change drives a full spectrum of extreme weather events, including flooding, storms, and prolonged rainfall, which present an equally serious threat to connected infrastructure. This can submerge equipment in areas with no flood history or flood risk, severing the connectivity that critical operations depend on.
When these events force systems offline, safety-critical operations are put at risk. This can impact everything from energy grids to hospital monitoring systems, street lighting, and security. As our climate changes, IoT providers must build resilience from the outset.
While it's impossible to eliminate the risk of outages entirely, enterprises can take significant steps to reduce their likelihood and impact. This includes comprehensive disaster recovery, data backup, and restoration plans, as well as multiple layers of failover, including backup power, alternative networks, and redundant SIM capabilities.
Treating cybersecurity as part of the same resilience equation is also crucial, as IoT devices are now the most frequently attacked in the UK, targeted on average 178 times a day. A device weakened or knocked offline by physical disruption becomes a far easier target. Ultimately, minimizing the impact of extreme weather comes down to proactive planning at the design stage.
