The self-taught seismologist: Monitoring earthquakes from optic fibers with AI
Seismology is undergoing significant change with the rise of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), a fast-growing technology that leverages existing fiber-optic cables—including those used for the Internet—into ultra-dense seismic networks with meter-scale sensor spacing. DAS provides a scalable and cost-effective way to monitor earthquakes from local to global scales, but it also poses a pressing challenge: the massive volume of data produced outpaces human capacity to analyze. For example, ...