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Open Infrastructure Map

openinframap.org

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Re: Open Infrastructure Map

#31

Post by Towaway69 »

antonvs wrote: post #15
Towaway69 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin, Germany just had a blackout because a left from centre organisation decided to set an electric exchange on fire. Right over new years and at a very cold time of year. Apparently the data on where the exchange was and how it would affect the surrounding neighbourhoods was openly available. The neighbourhoods affect were largely affluent. It’s probably also the reason why this is being reshared.

You can drive around an area you’re interested in, or look at satellite or aerial photos, to find these facilities. “Security by obscurity” is no more useful here than it is in software systems.

You can also just randomly nuke a country or invade it for its resources.

Or poison the internet with AI generated garbage.

There are many alternatives to acting nefariously, this is just one.

Re: Open Infrastructure Map

#33

Post by jillesvangurp »

lnsru wrote: post #3
efskap wrote: post #2

I find this site so fascinating, seeing how all the massive power lines are hooked up to far-away power plants and gradually have their voltage stepped down as they connect to consumers. All the undersea cables and pipelines I didn't know about.

It’s really interesting how perception of openness changes over time. During cold war publishing this information would send one directly to gulag.

I saw a nice presentation by Michael Cruickshank with an intelligence background that was using public geospatial data like what this is based on to model how climate change would affect power outages in an African city. In that case he was trying to figure out where all the power infrastructure was that would be affected in a flooding and then model network effects to figure out which parts of the city would end up being affected. Really interesting work.

Michael presented at the Berlin Geomob. His website has a more general overview of what he does: https://www.michaelcruickshank.me/recentwork. That does not seem to include a lot of detail on what he presented. Possibly because he is trying to be responsible here.

The security angle did come during the presentation. This is not the type of information that a lot of governments would want to make public but also something that could help them. You can mine a lot of intelligence from public data. And his approach of doing some kind of scenario modelling on top of the open data actually is interesting. That's something that can be used for good and for evil. And obviously something that a lot of intelligence agencies are probably already doing.

Re: Open Infrastructure Map

#34

Post by snickerer »

lnsru wrote: post #27
gehsty wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a double edged sword - secrecy leads to accidental damage by fishermen & anchors, so generally you want your cables and pipes charted. There are cables not on this map that are uncharted for things like acoustic monitoring & finger printing of vessels.

I have license for boat and use nautical maps. They show me a cable, but not the hierarchy of the infrastructure. I see a cable, but can’t evaluate if half of town stays without electricity or only an island with dozen houses if I damage it. However the available maps do not stop russian ships regularly dropping anchors on European infrastructure in Baltic see. Obviously charting them does not help. Maybe they should…

You can hide the position of the cables from fishermen and the public. But if someone knows where they are, it is the KGB, I mean, FSB.

We should make information about infrastructure public. There was a power outtage in Berlin, due to to an attack aginst a 'secret' cable bridge. If the map of cables would have been public, then the public may have had a chance to realize that having no backup cable is a bad idea for critical infrastructure.

Re: Open Infrastructure Map

#37

Post by iszomer »

efskap wrote: post #2

I find this site so fascinating, seeing how all the massive power lines are hooked up to far-away power plants and gradually have their voltage stepped down as they connect to consumers. All the undersea cables and pipelines I didn't know about.

Right? I didn't know there was a 130 MW (diesel) power plant on an island connected and off the coast of Taiwan.

Re: Open Infrastructure Map

#38

Post by holowoodman »

snickerer wrote: post #34
lnsru wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have license for boat and use nautical maps. They show me a cable, but not the hierarchy of the infrastructure. I see a cable, but can’t evaluate if half of town stays without electricity or only an island with dozen houses if I damage it. However the available maps do not stop russian ships regularly dropping anchors on European infrastructure in Baltic see. Obviously charting them does not help. Maybe they should…

You can hide the position of the cables from fishermen and the public. But if someone knows where they are, it is the KGB, I mean, FSB. We should make information about infrastructure public. There was a power outtage in Berlin, due to to an attack aginst a 'secret' cable bridge. If the map of cables would have been public, then the public may have had a chance to realize that having no backup cable is a bad idea for…

There were backup cables. The bridge carried 5 cables, redundancy configuration would have been 3+2 afaik. But only for purposes of maintenance, not to protect against hostile action. For that, one should have taken care to not have all redundancies on the same bridge ;)

And in most environments, you cannot hide the location of those cables. Either they are visible directly, like all overhead power lines. No use in hiding those. And for the underground ones, you could try to hide them. But every backhoe operator will rightfully want a map of those anyways, so the information will come out in some way.

The only environment where hiding this kind of infrastructure would be possible is some state-does-everything soviet-like police state. Where comrade backhoe-operator wouldn't get a map, but he would get accompanied by a secret police supervisor who would tell him where to dig and where not to.

Re: Open Infrastructure Map

#39

Post by raggles »

In New Zealand at least, a lot of this data seems to come from imagery; it's quite outdated, the cables are all missing and the voltages are pretty hit and miss. Cool project though.

Re: Open Infrastructure Map

#40

Post by bob1029 »

arjvik wrote: post #13

When I lived in Texas, we had a massive storm in winter of 2021 leaving many without power for a week. I was told that Texas maintained its own energy grid independent from the rest of the nation’s eastern and western grids, and supposedly only had a handful of high-voltage DC lines running between Texas’s and the rest of the nation’s. Supposedly this was why we couldn’t rely on excess capacity from anywhere else in…

Texas is actually on ~4 different grids. I live north of Houston and I'm on MISO.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/ERCOT-geographic-footpri...

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