Geophysics Seminar - Nate Lindsey "Can Geophysicists Make the Planet Safer?" Fibersense

100 years ago natural hazards claimed 10x more lives than they do today, however the planet still observes >100 fatalities per day as a result of earthquakes, tsunami, storms, rogue waves and wildfires. Recently, commercial φ-OTDR/DAS systems have begun sensing continuously within cities and offshore. φ-OTDR/DAS utilizes the optical field traveling inside long optical fibers, like those laid for the internet, to transduce the strain field operating on the fiber. At scale, φ-OTDR/DAS creates dense (1 sensor per 10 meters), long-range (<150 km), array recordings of the ambient seismic background with exceptional sensitivity (<10−9 strain) wherever optical fibers connect humanity. Using φ-OTDR/DAS we have begun to improve how we detect, measure and respond to deadly natural hazards. This talk will share some of this exciting and important work.