2023-01-12 (IPMA)
IPMA and the company Fibroglobal signed, in November 2022, a protocol with a view to promoting scientific development research projects, within the scope of submarine telecommunications cables to study the detection and early warning of earthquakes and tsunamis.
Fibroglobal, following public contracts signed with the Portuguese State, installed, manages and operates high-speed electronic communications networks in the Central Zone and in the Azores Autonomous Region. In this sense, it will provide access to optical fiber in the submarine cable between the islands of Faial, Flores, Corvo and Graciosa, allowing IPMA to install its measuring equipment, thus enabling the collection of information necessary for the investigation.
IPMA, as the national seismology authority and responsible for the Portuguese component of the global early warning tsunami detection system, sees this partnership as very relevant and innovative. It will now be possible to access this infrastructure located in a region of great importance from a seismological point of view, which will allow the development of pioneering experiences at a world level, and better understand the potential of submarine cables for monitoring seismic events, as well as the applications of these new civil protection methodologies.
Within the scope of the LEA* project - Listening to the Earth under the Atlantic, a partnership between IPMA, Instituto Dom Luiz (IDL) and Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) - it is planned to test one of the new technologies in this field - the DAS (Distributed Acoustic Sensing) - which due to its characteristics can be particularly useful in seismic monitoring in the Azores.
* Protocol signed in September 2020 with IT, with similar goals.