New Project: IMAGFib

With over four billion kilometres of telecom optical fibre cables worldwide, fibre sensing technology has the potential to build the largest global network of geo-sensors. By shining lasers into the fibres and measuring either the backscattered or the reflected light, each cable can be turned into a dense array of ground vibration sensors.

IMAGFib focusses on developing tools and workflows to sense over >> 100 km of onshore/offshore telecom fibres, recording natural and man-made earthquakes, ocean storms and urban noise. Our goal is to utilise this data to image the structure of the Earth’s deep (>>10 km) interior and monitor the ocean’s state.

Offshore, the dual sensitivity of fibres to strain and temperature will allow us to provide some of the first spatially- and temporally continuous measurements of ocean floor temperature variations in the North Atlantic—key for climate monitoring.