Distributed Acoustic Sensing Research Coordination Network (DAS RCN) Final Report

This final report is largely a product of the Capstone Workshop held June 13-14, 2023 in Madison, WI. A small writing group met for a day beyond the symposium portion of the Workshop to provide perspectives on challenges and opportunities. Several recurring issues were brought up throughout the award period – access to equipment and data management and storage. The report also recounts the initiation of the RCN and some pre- and syn-DAS science and technology developments.

The Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) Research Coordination Network (RCN) was funded by the Earth Sciences Division (EAR) of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Its activities began in mid-2020, a year in which originally proposed in-person coordination activities instead operated largely online. This virtual meeting space encouraged large-scale workshops and webinars. It expanded the reach of the RCN internationally. DAS technology adoption showed logistic growth from being a modest niche into a conventional tool over a range of research fields and applications. 

The rapid adoption of DAS in the several years before the RCN was a large motivation for initiating it. Once underway, the Steering Committee quickly established approximately a dozen Working Groups and organized RCN-wide workshops and webinars. Many members of the two governing groups were early adopters of the technology. However, the “entry fee” in terms of equipment and project costs was a barrier for many, especially non-seismologists. Early-career professors were among the leaders in DAS experiments because they used their start-up funds to purchase interrogators. Using start-up funds was a strong commitment to the potential of DAS.

At the heart of this report is a list of needs and opportunities from the perspective of the relatively broad and diverse DAS RCN participants. Issues of community equity and access are discussed side-by-side with science and technology opportunities. High priority is assigned to early-career researchers. We invite the DAS community and funding agencies to use this report as a “white paper” to realize the priorities, build connections to new disciplines, and address unanticipated opportunities in creative ways, such as NSF awardees by supporting field or analysis experience to students and early-career researchers as a broader impact.

This report serves two purposes. First, it is a record of the DAS RCN’s activities. After a brief technical introduction to DAS, Section 1.2 recounts the origins of the RCN, its organization, and sponsored events. It includes an account and list of archived webinars that retain value as entry points for researchers new to RCN. Section 1.3 is a snapshot of DAS research in the different Working Group topics during the RCN.  Second, the report is offered in the spirit of a “white paper” with recommendations and priorities for funding agencies and researchers. Section 4 outlines a five-year timeframe for facilities data management, instrumentation, community building, and education/outreach that are needed to attain the bright future that DAS portends. Section 5 concludes with a succinct list of ten recommendations. A series of appendices provides detailed links and supporting material for the body of the report as well as a visions of applications in Marine Biology and Geomorphology.