Distributed fibre-optic acoustic sensing: a tool to assess rock properties during active and passive seismic surveys

Ubiquitously used for monitoring pipelines and infrastructures, distributed fibre-optic acoustic sensing is becoming an emerging technology for earthquake monitoring thanks to the possibility to interrogate a large vast of distances with a dense number of sensing points in which an optical fiber cable can be retrofitted. Moreover, it can also be used as a tool by geophysicists for the characterization of subsurface elements, such as rocks, faults, and geological structures before excavation work. In this work, we present two applications where DAS technology can contribute to assess rock properties during passive (in a mining site) and active (in a lake) seismic surveys. In both cases, seismograms generated from DAS measurements were comparable to those measured by traditional receivers, paving the way towards their use for assessing rock quality during surveys.