CIVIC-PG Track A: Leveraging Existing Fiber-Optic Cables to Identify and Manage Urban Environmental Hazards

世界各地的城市都在应对基础设施老化和气候变化带来的复杂挑战。这表现为污水管道泄漏、长期洪水和岩土工程故障等问题。其中许多问题与地下环境有关，地下环境对城市起着许多关键作用，但缺乏实时信息。此外，社会经济弱势和/或主要由少数民族组成的社区通常比多数人口或收入较高的社区面临更多的环境危害。城市需要以具有成本效益和公平的方式来确定、监测和优先考虑干预措施，以管理这些问题。这项研究利用了现有的电信光纤基础设施，这些基础设施在所有城市几乎无处不在。该方法涉及一种新的，光纤，地下，环境传感器网络。该项目的目标是具有光纤选项电缆的位置，并且受到某些类型的基础设施问题和危险的影响，例如沉降或土地故障，排水管道泄漏或排水不畅。将从利用现有电缆和传感器的选定位置收集数据（例如，下水道流量传感器）或关于环境危害的其它数据（例如，天坑、洪水报告或滑坡倾向的库存数据），这些信息来自城市合作伙伴。这些外部传感器用于根据传统传感方法和/或环境危害数据验证光纤传感。该项目允许演示和测试新的实时、高空间分辨率、易于实施、低成本的传感系统，该系统有可能彻底改变已安装的城市基础设施的管理方式，以应对城市挑战，并创建智能、可持续的城市。由于其设置，老化的基础设施，以及研究人员与市政团体的参与，匹兹堡PA被选为最初的实施。更广泛的影响包括开发新型城市基础设施和地面灾害监测和预警系统，改善城市服务，以及新的见解和经验教训，可以促进更广泛地实施这一具有潜在影响力但成本低的城市环境工具。这一研究规划阶段将建立科学基础，使公民合作伙伴能够扩大光纤电缆，地球物理，在全市范围内使用传感技术，以识别和监测环境和基础设施危害。这项工作将部署新开发的干预措施，为城市和城市决策者提供信息，帮助他们以更具成本效益，及时和公平的方式管理基础设施灾害。如果成功，该项目将提高城市地区多种灾害的早期预警能力，以具有成本效益和公平的方式帮助管理和最大限度地减少这些灾害，影响未来基础设施网络和更具弹性的城市的设计，发展实施该技术的劳动力，并强调城市规划者在电信光纤选址中增加环境公平性的潜在机会。本项目是对城市创新挑战赛A类项目的响应，其基于电信暗光纤的技术和实践成果可以应用于其他智慧城市。生活在不断变化的气候中：该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Cities around the world are dealing with the compounding challenges of aging infrastructure and climate change. This manifests as issues such as leaky sewer pipes, chronic flooding, and geotechnical failures. Many of these issues are related to the subsurface environment that plays many critical roles for cities, but for which there is a lack of real-time information. Moreover, communities that are socio-economically disadvantaged and/or composed primarily of racial minorities are commonly more exposed to more environmental hazards than those in the majority population or neighborhoods with higher incomes. Cities are in need of cost-effective and equitable ways to identify, monitor and prioritize interventions to manage these issues. This research leverages existing telecommunication fiber-optic infrastructure that is nearly ubiquitous in all cities. The approach involves a novel, optic fiber, subsurface, environmental sensor network. The project targets locations that have fiber option cables and that are subjected to certain types of infrastructure issues and hazards such as subsidence or land failure, leaking sewer pipes, or poor drainage. Data will be collected from select locations that leverage existing cables and sensors (e.g., sewer flow sensors) or other data on environmental hazards (e.g., sinkholes, flooding reports, or inventory data for landslide proneness), information that comes from city partners. These external sensors are used to validate the fiber optic sensing against traditional sensing approaches and/or environmental hazard data. This project allows demonstration and testing of new real-time, high spatial resolution, easy-to-implement, low cost, sensing system that has potential to revolutionize how installed city infrastructure is managed to address civic challenges and create smart, sustainable cities. Because of its setting, aging infrastructure, and involvement of researchers with municipal groups, Pittsburgh PA was selected for the initial implementation. Broader impacts include development of a new type of urban infrastructure and ground hazard monitoring and warning system, improved city services, and new insights and lessons learned that can facilitate broader implementation of this potentially impactful, yet low-cost tool for urban environments.This research planning phase will establish scientific foundations that enable the civic partners to expand the implementation of the fiber optic cable, geophysical, sensing technology citywide to identify and monitor environmental and infrastructure hazards. The effort will deploy the newly developed intervention to inform city and urban decision makers to help them manage infrastructures hazards in a more cost-effective, timely, and equitable manner. If successful, this project will improve early warning capability for multiple hazards in urban areas, help manage and minimize these hazards in cost-effective and equitable manners, impact the design of future infrastructure networks and more resilient cities, develop workforce for implementation of the technology, and highlight potential opportunities for urban planners to increase environmental equity in the siting of telecom optical fibers. This project is transformative because the technical and practice outcome based on telecom dark fiber we demonstrate in this project could be used for other smart cities.This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program—Track A. Living in a changing climate: pre-disaster action around adaptation, resilience, and mitigation—and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.