Distributed fiber optic sensing technologies for underground monitoring

Summary Recent advances in sensor systems offer intriguing possibilities to radically alter the methods of underground condition assessment. Rich data obtained from such systems can act as a catalyst for new design, construction, operation and maintenance processes for civil engineering infrastructure that involves underground. This talk will introduce distributed fiber optic sensing system as an example of this trend. The value of such data to realize performance based design will be discussed using several case studies. The case studies include (i) distributed fiber optic strain sensing for a river levee monitoring, (ii) distributed fiber optic strain sensing for pipeline monitoring, and (iii) distributed fiber optic acoustic sensing for underground characterization including groundwater table location.