MIT Earth Resources Laboratory presents Biondo Biondi, Professor at Stanford University, on "Large-scale monitoring of urban environments by fiber-optic seismology: lessons from six years of the Stanford DAS project.”

 

"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 enabled by Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) technology can produce continuous and densely sampled data recorded from difficult to access locations and at an affordable cost.

 

One of the most exciting applications is leveraging pre-existing telecommunications infrastructure to collect seismic and elastic-deformation data under cities at unprecedented scale and spatial density. I will share what we learned from the experience of continuous recording under Stanford campus that we started in September 2016 and that led to recording data with a 50-km fiber cable this past Fall. I will discuss four of the most promising applications that we are developing: 1) near-surface imaging and monitoring, 2) local-seismicity analysis, 3) infrastructure (e.g. bridges) monitoring, and 4) urban traffic monitoring. I will present the challenges to fully realize these goals and discuss the opportunities for students to develop and apply their technical skills in signal processing, machine learning, and geophysical inversion and to lead the development of this exciting new research field that will have an important role in supporting the long-term sustainability of our cities.”

 

Biondo Biondi is the Barney and Estelle Morris Professor of  Geophysics at Stanford University. He is director of the Stanford Exploration Project (SEP). SEP is an academic consortium whose mission is to develop innovative seismic imaging methodologies and to educate the next generation of leaders in applied seismology.

 

Biondo and his students devise new algorithms to improve imaging of active and passive seismic data. Images obtained from seismic data are the primary source of information on the structural and stratigraphic complexities in Earth's subsurface and on many subsurface dynamic processes. These images are constructed by processing seismic wavefields recorded at the Earth's surface and generated by either active-source (e.g., vibroseis trucks) experiments or by natural (e.g., ocean waves) and anthropogenic (e.g., vehicle traffic) sources. Because our datasets are enormous, and wavefield propagation needs to be accurately modeled to achieve high-resolution imaging, we need to harness the power of the latest computational hardware to test our methods on field data. Therefore, mapping imaging algorithms into high-performance architecture is an essential component of our research. The amount and quality of information that we can extract from seismic data are directly linked to the temporal and spatial sampling of the sources and the receivers. In the past several years, we have been working on methods to process data recorded by using fiber cables as seismic sensors. Fiber-optic seismic recording promises to enable cost-effective continuous seismic monitoring at a large scale. A particularly exciting possibility is leveraging preexisting telecommunication infrastructure to record seismic data with dense arrays in urban environments continuously. In 2016 we pioneered that idea by recording data under the Stanford campus. Since then, we recorded data in San Jose and on a 48-km array under Stanford and neighboring cities.

 

In 2004 the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) honored Biondo with the Reginald Fessenden Award. In 2006 Biondo published with SEG the book “3D Seismic Imaging” that was the first book to introduce the theory of seismic imaging from the 3-D perspective. In 2007 Biondo was the SEG/EAGE Distinguished Short Course Instructor, for which he gave a one-day course in more than 30 cities around the world.