Potsdam, Germany, 3-4 November 2016

Contact: tsbworkshops@itu.int

Introduction

More than a million kilometres of subsea glas fibre communication cables traverse the world oceans in order to provide global high speed interconnectivity and transmit in this capacity petabytes of scientific data, yet the potential to sample data along these cables is as yet untapped by science. Along these optical repeaters, regularly spaced at 50- to 100 km intervals, reamplify the signal carried by the cable. Adding sensors to the repeaters would create a Science Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications (SMART) network, an unparalleled and cost-effective network for providing realtime data for earthquake and tsunamis observation and early warning, and for ocean climate and sea-level monitoring. An international joint task force (JTF) of three UN agencies (International Telecommunication Union, World Meteorological Organization, and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO) is working to incorporate environmental monitoring sensors into transoceanic submarine cable systems.

Following on from two NASA-funded science workshops ( http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/NASA_SMART_Cables/ ) and a workshop on planning a wet demonstrator project held in Dubai in April 2016 (https://eos.org/meeting-reports/submarine-cable-systems-for-future-societal-needs), this workshop aims to bring together scientists and practitioners to focus on SMART cable applications in earthquake and tsunami science and early warning, and other solid Earth science topics.

Objectives     

Based on the workshop, a white paper summarising the main findings will be compiled