Natural hazard monitoring using Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) – MONIDAS

MONIDAS project aims at developing the DAS (Distributed Acoustic Sensing) technology to monitor seismic, volcanic and landslide
natural hazards. DAS sensors use standard telecommunication optical fibers and measure the longitudinal strain of the cable in the acoustic range (0.1 to 1kHz).
A single fiber connected to an interrogator at a one end, acts as a dense distribution of sensors over dozen of kilometers.
We propose
1) to build a DAS acquisition system in a partnership with Febus-Optics, a startup that developed its own DAS that we tested successfully in the last months.
2) to test this new acquisition system on four geological targets on which the academic partners have strong expertise a) Stromboli volcano; b) a submarine cable offshore of Greece coasts; c) a landslide in the Alpes, d) a geothermal field in Alsace generating induced seismicity. These four targets represent the four main geological risks that we have to deal with in France.
3) to develop jointly new data processing i.e. array analysis, and machine learning methods to better constraint and improve detection of seismic sources, sismo-volcanic deformations, rock-fall, landslide, etc. Some of the processing (ambient seismic analysis) will be implemented into the DAS and the processing knowledge transfered to Febus-Optics
4) We will use this equipment to test and evaluate the sensor sensitivity, the coupling properties of various optical fibers in the various environments that we will test.
Ultimately, Monidas aims at providing the geophysical French community with a new instrument that has recently shown many possibilities of monitroring and data processing and transfering to the to industrial partners, Febus optics and Sisprobe academic expertise in data processing and data acquisition