On May 8th, 2024 at 11.00 am Biondo Biondi, Professor and Chair of the Geophysics Department at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Earth Imaging Project, will hold the seminar on "Fiber-optic seismology for large-scale geophysical monitoring: from modern cities to CCS projects” in DEIB Seminar Room "N. Schiavoni" (Building 20).

The capability of turning fiber-optic cables into seismic sensors has the potential of providing datasets that “illuminate” Earth processes in a way that would be impossible with data recorded by conventional seismic sensors. Fiber-optic seismology can produce continuous and densely sampled data recorded from difficult to access locations and at an affordable cost. The seminar will focus on the opportunities for leveraging ubiquitous telecommunication fiber cables with distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) to make cities more sustainable and resilient to climate change. We can use of “dark fibers” in urban environment to monitor both human activities above the surface (e.g. vehicular traffic) as well as possibly hazardous natural phenomena occurring in the subsurface (e.g. water intrusion, landslides, or earthquakes). DAS data from dark fibers enables also cost-effective monitoring of structural health of urban infrastructure such as bridges and tunnels. At the end of the presentation possible fruitful collaborations between geophysicists and optical physicist and engineers in developing and applying new fiber sensing technologies to modern cities will be discussed.