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的复合挑战。这表现为下水道漏水、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，在社会经济上处于不利地位和/或主要由少数族裔组成的社区，通常比人口占多数的社区或收入较高的社区更容易面临更多的环境危害。城市需要具有成本效益和公平的方式来确定、监测和确定管理这些问题的干预措施的优先次序。这项研究利用了所有城市几乎无处不在的现有电信光纤基础设施。该方法涉及一种新颖的、光纤、地下、环境传感器网络。该项目的目标是拥有光纤可选电缆的地点，以及遭受某些类型的基础设施问题和危险的地点，例如下沉或地面故障、下水道泄漏或排水不良。数据将从利用现有电缆和传感器(例如，下水道流量传感器)或其他环境危害数据(例如，天坑、洪水报告或滑坡倾向性的库存数据)的选定地点收集，这些信息来自城市合作伙伴。这些外部传感器用于对照传统传感方法和/或环境危害数据来验证光纤传感。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。由于它的环境，老化的基础设施，以及研究人员与市政团体的参与，匹兹堡被选为初步实施。更广泛的影响包括开发新型的城市基础设施和地面灾害监测和预警系统，改善城市服务，以及获得新的见解和经验教训，以促进这一潜在影响但低成本的城市环境工具的更广泛实施。这一研究规划阶段将建立科学基础，使民间合作伙伴能够在全市范围内扩大光纤电缆、地球物理、传感技术的实施，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、更及时和更公平的方式管理基础设施风险。如果成功，该项目将提高对城市地区多种危险的早期预警能力，帮助以经济高效和公平的方式管理和最大限度地减少这些危险，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，并突出城市规划者在电信光纤选址方面增加环境公平性的潜在机会。这个项目具有变革性，因为我们在这个项目中展示的基于电信暗光纤的技术和实践成果可以用于其他智能城市。该项目是对公民创新挑战计划的回应-轨道A。生活在不断变化的气候：围绕适应、恢复和缓解的灾难前行动-是NSF、国土安全部和能源部的合作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.