Pitter, patter, gurgle, burble: measuring the acoustics of rainfall using DAS in urban environments
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26443/seismica.v5i2.2713Abstract
Accurate precipitation data is one of the key inputs for hydrological models, yet traditional ground-based rain gauges and remote sensing data often lack the necessary spatial coverage and/or resolution for local environmental applications. This study demonstrates the potential of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) as a tool for rainfall detection and quantification with high spatiotemporal resolution. We evaluate data from two distinct fiber-optic deployments in Houston, Texas: a surface cable in a controlled environment at Rice University campus and a 12-km urban dark fiber array. Rain induces high-energy broadband noise in DAS data with a strong correlation between the precipitation rate and mean DAS energy, consistent with past studies using traditional seismic sensors. However, DAS sensitivity to rain is heavily influenced by several external factors, including burial conditions, deployment depth, cable coupling, and seasonal ground coverage. In complex urban environments, where the signal is coupled directly from surface impacts on utility infrastructure, fiber sensitivity appears to be limited to spatial domains where the cable resurfaces from the deep conduits. Ultimately, our study shows that DAS can serve as a scalable alternative to traditional seismic sensors for distributed rain gauging across urban networks after identifying network portions with environmental sensitivity.
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