The widespread availability of fiber optic cables below the city streets provides a unique opportunity to leverage this existing infrastructure to improve our modern society’s resilience. The existing telecommunication fiber optic networks can be repurposed as massive arrays of sensors to investigate various aspects of our urban environment. Over recent years, many studies have proved that fiber sensing can be effectively utilized forvarious applications, including broadband seismic monitoring, near-surface property mapping, groundwater level monitoring, structural integrity assessment, and earthquake ground motion prediction for seismic hazards.
This session aims to bring together not only researchers, but also fiber optic network owners, photonics manufacturers, and experts in rock mechanics from both laboratory and mining contexts, all sharing an interest in the application of fiber optic sensing for enhancing societal resilience. Policymakers interested in exploring the use of telecommunication fiber cable for this purpose are also warmly invited to actively engage in the collaborative discussion.
We invite studies focusing on the utilization of telecommunication networks for all aspects of urban planning, from near-surface structure investigation to seismic monitoring, wave propagation, ground motion analysis, and finally, developing real-time monitoring and early warning systems for natural disasters. We also welcome contributions related to applications such as infrastructure resilience, including monitoring the health and integrity of civil structures, bridges, tunnels, highways, pipelines, dams, and other critical infrastructure. Furthermore, we are enthusiastic about further untapped capabilities or challenges of fiber optic networks for urban resilience purposes. If you have any other case studies or even witness challenges (e.g., signal saturation, fiber coupling problems, data confidentiality, and protection of personal life) on utilization of telecommunication fiber in diverse settings, including urban, rural, or coastal environments — both on land and underwater — with varying cable lengths, we encourage you to share your experiences/problems and possible technical/scientific solutions in this session.
Invited speaker: Hsin-Hua Huang (Academia Sinica, Taiwan)