The ongoing change in Earth`s climate is causing an increase in the frequency and severity of climate-related hazards, for example, from coastal flooding, riverine flooding, and tropical cyclones. There is currently an urgent need to quantify the potential impacts of these events on infrastructure and users, especially for hitherto neglected infrastructure sectors, such as telecommunications, particularly given our increasing dependence on digital technologies. In this analysis a global assessment is undertaken, quantifying the number of mobile cells vulnerable to climate hazards using open crowdsourced data equating to 7.6 million 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G assets. For a 0.01% annual probability event under a high emissions scenario (RCP8.5), the number of affected cells is estimated at 2.26 million for tropical cyclones, equating to USD 1.01 billion in direct damage (an increase against the historical baseline of 14% and 44%, respectively). Equally, for coastal flooding the number of potentially affected cells for an event with a 0.01% annual probability under RCP8.5 is 109.9 thousand, equating to direct damage costs of USD 2.69 billion (an increase against the baseline of 70% and 78%, respectively). The findings demonstrate the need for risk analysts to include mobile communications (and telecommunications more broadly) in future critical national infrastructure assessments. Indeed, this paper contributes a proven assessment methodology to the literature for use in future research for assessing this critical infrastructure sector.

翻译：地球气候持续变化导致沿海洪水、河流泛滥及热带气旋等气候相关灾害的频率和强度不断增加。当前迫切需要量化这些事件对基础设施和用户造成的潜在影响，特别是通信等此前被忽视的基础设施领域，尤其是鉴于人类对数字技术的依赖日益加深。本研究开展了一项全球性评估，利用相当于760万个2G、3G、4G和5G基站的开放众包数据，量化了受气候灾害影响的移动基站数量。在高排放情景（RCP8.5）下，对于年发生概率为0.01%的事件，受热带气旋影响的基站数量估计为226万个，直接经济损失达10.1亿美元（分别比历史基线增加14%和44%）。同样，在RCP8.5情景下，对于年发生概率为0.01%的沿海洪水事件，潜在受影响基站数量为10.99万个，直接经济损失达26.9亿美元（分别比基线增加70%和78%）。研究结果表明，风险分析师有必要将移动通信（以及更广泛的电信系统）纳入未来国家关键基础设施评估。本文为未来评估这一关键基础设施领域的研究贡献了一套经过验证的评估方法论。