19. A Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller communicatively coupled to a network and to a Software Defined Networking (SDN) application to detect, diagnose, and mitigate issues in the network, the SDN controller comprising: a network interface, a processor, and memory, each communicatively coupled therebetween; wherein the memory stores instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to communicate Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) data related to the network, the OAM data related to current operation of the network to an SDN application, receive external data related to the network, the external data describing events related to any one or more of construction, weather, natural disasters, and planned outages, cause a rule engine to be instantiated to cause evaluation of one or more rules based on any of the OAM data, an event, policy, and an anomaly, communicate one or more actions based on the evaluation to a Path Computation Element (PCE) or other path computation component, and analyze the external data to determine a relationship between the events and the network elements in the network, wherein the relationship comprises any one or more of distance, amount of time the event exists, a number of events in a shared area, reputation of an event based on historical data, and a magnitude of collateral damage an event may cause to generate an associated risk level.
19. A Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller communicatively coupled to a network and to a Software Defined Networking (SDN) application to detect, diagnose, and mitigate issues in the network, the SDN controller comprising: a network interface, a processor, and memory, each communicatively coupled therebetween; wherein the memory stores instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to communicate Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) data related to the network, the OAM data related to current operation of the network to an SDN application, receive external data related to the network, the external data describing events related to any one or more of construction, weather, natural disasters, and planned outages, cause a rule engine to be instantiated to cause evaluation of one or more rules based on any of the OAM data, an event, policy, and an anomaly, communicate one or more actions based on the evaluation to a Path Computation Element (PCE) or other path computation component, and analyze the external data to determine a relationship between the events and the network elements in the network, wherein the relationship comprises any one or more of distance, amount of time the event exists, a number of events in a shared area, reputation of an event based on historical data, and a magnitude of collateral damage an event may cause to generate an associated risk level. 20. The SDN controller of claim 19 , wherein the relationship is determined through: geocoding the events and network elements and calculating the distance based thereon, parsing environmental event consolidation programs for end and start times of an event to calculate a time window, parsing environmental event consolidation programs for historical reputation of an event and assigning a value based on credibility, and parsing environmental event consolidation programs for existence of collateral damage multipliers and assigning a value based thereon.