GCRI · Cybersecurity and Digital Resilience
Dependencies and consequences
Digital systems sit underneath almost every other system, and they depend in turn on electricity, telecommunications, hardware supply chains and skilled people. This page maps the main dependencies, explains how digital failures travel into physical, economic and social harm, and names the platforms across the Consortium that study, govern or finance the connected systems.
- STEM methods
- 6
- Canonical methods this field applies
- Topics
- 8
- Subject pages in the field
- Counterparts
- 7
- Platforms in shared fields across the network
- Report series
- 2
- Reports series it contributes to
The foundations beneath the software.
Electricity
Data centres, networks and devices need continuous power. Grid failures take digital services down, and backup power has limits. See Critical Infrastructure.
Telecommunications
Fibre, submarine cables, mobile networks and satellite links carry data. Damage at a few landing points or exchanges can isolate regions.
Hardware and software
Semiconductors, firmware and open-source libraries come from concentrated supply chains that are hard to verify.
Connected activity in Europe.
Night lights, population density and true-colour imagery over Europe, from NASA GIBS. Each layer carries its own date.
The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.
Layers 3
Connected activity, for this page
Keyboard, with the map focused
Hold Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll to zoom
Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
Loading the latest NASA imagery.
Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.
Connected activity, framed on Europe.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date. They are indicators, not assessments of any place.
Data: NASA GIBS · ASTER GDEM · Blue Marble · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Natural Earth · NASA EONET · NASA HLS S30Sources and licences
- We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- VIIRS Black Marble night-time lights, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; distributed by the NASA Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive and Distribution System (LAADS DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University. 2018. Gridded Population of the World, Version 4 (GPWv4): Population Density, Revision 11. NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). doi:10.7927/H49C6VHW. CC BY 4.0
- VIIRS near-real-time products (flood, land surface temperature, snow cover, corrected reflectance), NASA LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- MODIS land products (vegetation indices, gross primary production, land cover), NASA LP DAAC and LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA (ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003, NASA LP DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). Cite as: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003. doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. NASA open data
- Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Public domain
- © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via NASA GIBS (coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). ODbL
- Blue Marble, NASA Earth Observatory; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- Context on the globe and flat map: coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names from NASA GIBS reference layers (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Blue Marble imagery as an optional base; 3D terrain and the elevation read-out from the ASTER GDEM elevation colour index (5 m to 200 m classes, exaggerated for legibility). Boundaries are drawn as published and imply no position on any territory.
- Live events: NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET); events are indicative and keep their original source links.
- Observed (EO): NASA HLS S30 (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026). We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
- NASA GIBS: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
- Optional layers (5 sources in the layer list: live, forecast, observed and context) print their provider credit on the map and here when switched on; forecasts are model output and derived indices are estimates.
Layers and dates
- Night-time lights, daily: VIIRS Black Marble (VNP46A2), NASA LAADS DAAC · 12 Oct 2026
- Population density, 2020: Population: CIESIN, Columbia University, Gridded Population of the World v4.11 (2018), NASA SEDAC, CC BY 4.0 · static
- Flood water, 3-day composite: VIIRS Global Flood Product, NASA LANCE · 14 Oct 2026
- True colour: VIIRS NOAA-20 corrected reflectance, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
- Land cover type (IGBP), yearly: MODIS Terra and Aqua land cover (MCD12Q1), NASA LP DAAC · 2024
- Enhanced vegetation index, rolling 8 days: MODIS Terra EVI, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
How failure travels outward.
Physical systems depend on digital control. Water treatment, power distribution, pipelines, rail signalling and building systems use industrial control systems; compromise or failure can stop operations or, in the worst cases, create safety hazards. Healthcare depends on electronic records, imaging, laboratory systems and connected devices. Logistics depends on scheduling and tracking systems, so a digital outage at a port or carrier quickly becomes a physical backlog.
Economic and social systems depend on digital identity, payments and communications. Outages in payment systems interrupt commerce and benefits; data breaches expose people to fraud; disruption of information systems can weaken public trust. Financial transmission of these effects is studied at Financial Cyber and Operational Resilience and Payments and Market Infrastructure at The Global Risks Alliance (GRA).
Field overview.
The screen a team would use to follow this subject: its measures, states and decisions. Names are examples and values are illustrative.
Typical chains of failure.
- 01
Provider outage
A failure at a cloud or identity provider stops many customers at once, across sectors that have no direct relationship with each other.
- 02
Ransomware in a hospital
Loss of clinical systems forces diversion of patients, delays diagnosis and spreads load to neighbouring hospitals.
- 03
Compromised update
Malicious code inserted into a trusted software update reaches every customer that installs it, bypassing perimeter defences.
- 04
Grid and cyber together
A power outage disables monitoring and communications just when they are needed to manage the outage; this is the theme of the platform's cyber-physical outage exercise.
How links are analysed, and who decides.
Dependency analysis uses network science and contagion and reliability and resilience engineering, with stated assumptions and uncertainty. Decisions on regulation and crisis coordination belong to competent authorities; dialogue among them is convened at Disaster and Crisis Governance and AI and Digital Governance at The Global Risks Forum (GRF).
Questions and answers.
Is a dependency map a forecast?
Are dependency maps public?
Why include power in a cyber map?
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