Considering Cost and Network Survivability in laying telecommunications cables

There have been costly consequences of several earthquakes and these events have raised concerns of possible Internet shutdown in certain areas. Of particular concern are situations where undersea cables lie close to each other in earthquake-prone areas. This presentation will report progress in a Collaborative Research Fund Project supported by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong. The project aims to develop design methodologies for cabling systems taking into account cable attributes such as shape, shield, location, and capacity, trading off costs and network resilience. We integrate data on topography, earthquake effects and hazards into a network survivability model involving optimization over manifolds, leading to Pareto front results that trade off cost versus network failure risk. The optimization is based on evaluation of cost and network survival probability. Separation of cables in earthquake prone areas increases cost but also increases network survival probability. We aim to provide cable laying design solutions that minimize cost for a given network survival probability and also solutions that maximize network survival probability for a given budget. Results based on a combination of path planning for cable laying optimization taking account of the above mentioned earthquake effects and hazards using theoretical models as well as real world data will be presented.