Critical Infrastructure Resilience (CIR) is vital to national economic security, public health, and safety. The nation’s critical infrastructure (CI) is dependent upon physical and electronic-based systems for many applications to maintain operations that are at risk from man-made and natural disasters. The use of GPS for position, navigation, and timing (PNT) is essential for critical infrastructure such as the electric grid, telecommunications, transportation, and emergency services. Other electronic capabilities with critical infrastructure ecosystems are susceptible to attacks or natural occurrences of electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD). CI owners and operators (CI O&O) lack solid, data driven information on actions and mitigations for risk management.
Research from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) CIR project will inform best practices and provide tools to CI O&O on how to prepare and protect PNT capabilities and electronic systems against an EMP or GMD event. Activities focus on testing, evaluating, and validating the impacts on select, prioritized CI, including 5G infrastructure, to provide industry with actionable, timely information to protect systems prior to buildout of new infrastructure.