“Ground Control to Major Tom!”
“Check your policy wording and put your spacesuit on!”
Insurance Business have finally moved into the 21st Century with some truly space age of aquarius exposures to risk to deal with over the next year, according to a new report from Lloyds of London.
These new age risks include Space weather, cyber risk and critical infrastructure attacks that are predicted to cause big problems for consumers, businesses and their insurance companies in 2011.
The Lloyd’s 360 Risk Insight report states that ‘The phenomenon of space weather is one of the most difficult to quantify and yet potentially serious sources of loss and disruption for business.’
“Space weather and its impact on Earth: Implications for business”, says that businesses should be looking at ways to assess and mitigate space weather risks this year because the 11-year solar cycle is expected to peak in 2012/13.”
Turbulent space weather created by solar phenomena such as coronal mass ejections, solar flares, solar wind, solar radiation and magnetic storms could have wide ranging impacts around the globe in climatic responses, many scientists believe.
These phenomena are also predicted to affect aircraft communications, air traffic control and navigational systems which could malfunction or might stop working, satellite and GPS systems could also malfunction, and surprisingly. power grids could collapse.
Scientists know a lot about the possible causes and effects of solar weather from previous cycles. Established infrastructure that we take for granted, such as rail networks, telephone systems, pipelines and electric power grids have all been seriously disrupted by space weather in the past.
But the economic fall-out that could result from the increasingly active solar season is far less certain. That’s because our dependency on wi-fi and internet technology is so much greater than before.
“There is growing concern that the coming solar maximum will expose problems in the many wireless systems that have grown in popularity during the quiet solar conditions that have prevailed over recent years,” the Lloyd’s report warns.
Insurance Blog should have a lot to write about then over the coming year if these concerns are realised.
And then it’s 2012!
Don’t worry about the risks to the Olympic games! The Mayan Calendar stops here……….
And the earth is positioned in alignment with the centre of of the Universe!
Source: www.insuranceblog.co.uk
