Meeting Sessions

The 2026 topical meeting focuses on emerging seismic sensing research conducted under the following proposed session topics. Please visit this page for updates in Spring 2026 as we provide final session descriptions and announce keynote and invited speakers.

• The Built Environment
  DAS is becoming increasing popular in the monitoring and assessment of built infrastructure like bridges, roads, water dams, tunnels, pipelines and buildings. We welcome contributions in DAS signal processing and applications in various areas like automated detection and localization of structural damages, assessment of road, railway track and tunnel conditions and traffic management by capturing traffic volume, speed and vehicle classes. Furthermore the session focuses on indoor occupancy detection and tracking as well as on the integration of DAS in early warning systems. We also look forward to real world implementations and monitoring of built-environment and nature interfaces (e.g. waterfronts, landslides, urban subsurface, ..) as well as generic automated processing techniques.
• Integration of Diverse Sensor Networks
  Fiber-optic sensing is providing new insights into a broad array of physical earth processes. But most deployments have been short-term, and targeted specific processes. In this session we will explore efforts to both integrate fiber-optic sensing as part of diverse sensor networks, and also as part of longer term monitoring activities. We invite contributions highlighting the integrated use of fiber-optic, broadband, short-period, low-cost, sea-floor and smartphone sensors to understand seismic, volcanic, solid and fluid earth processes and hazards.
  
• Near Surface Geophysics
  Near-surface geophysics plays a critical role in understanding the dynamic processes occurring within the uppermost layers of the Earth, where interactions between the solid Earth, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and atmosphere directly impact natural hazards, water resources, ecosystems, and infrastructure.
  
  This session highlights recent advances in near-surface imaging and monitoring enabled by fiber-optic technologies, as well as complementary seismic and geophysical approaches. We welcome observational, experimental, and methodological contributions that leverage ambient noise, active sources, anthropogenic signals, and natural transients to characterize shallow subsurface structure and dynamics.
  
• Solid Earth Geophysics
  Fiber-optic cable sensing is emerging as a transformative observational approach for capturing Solid Earth processes across the broad spatial and temporal scales that characterize tectonic, fault, and volcanic systems. By instrumenting dedicated fiber and existing telecommunication networks with distributed acoustic, temperature, and strain sensing, researchers can detect and quantify earthquake shaking, crustal deformation, magmatic intrusion, and volcanic unrest over distances spanning tens to hundreds of kilometers. These capabilities are closing longstanding observational gaps and enabling new insights into the multi-scale dynamics of tectonic and magmatic processes. This session highlights innovative applications of fiber sensing technology that are expanding detection thresholds, improving physical interpretation, and ushering in a new era of high-resolution, large-aperture observations of the Solid Earth.
  
• Technological Innovation
  Recent advances in photonics and optical metrology are rapidly expanding the capabilities of seismic measurements, enabling dense spatial sampling, long-term and low-cost monitoring. By bringing together researchers from photonics and instrumentation together with seismology, this session aims to highlight innovative optical sensing technologies and discuss their potential impact on earthquake science, geohazards, engineering, and environmental monitoring.
  
  This session welcomes contributions on a broad range of technological innovations in sensing, including, but not limited to, optical system architectures, novel demodulation algorithms, DAS systems, polarization-based fiber sensing, and advanced light sources such as frequency-comb-based systems. Both field and laboratory demonstrations are welcome.
  
• Water (Liquid or Frozen)
  This session explores how optical seismology and other novel seismic sensing technologies enabling new observations of dynamic processes of water and ice. It will feature contributions ranging from ocean acoustics, seafloor monitoring, weather events, to cryoseismology and glaciological applications. By bridging marine, atmospheric through to cryospheric settings, the session highlights how dense, high-frequency, distributed measurements are reshaping the study of coupled Earth system processes with the hydrosphere.
  

The 2026 topical meeting will also feature events such as the pre-meeting DAS workshop located at the Keck Observatory headquarters in Waimea. The focus of the full-day hands-on tutorial workshop includes the use computational tools to analyze Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) data, relying on data from experiments conducted previously on Maunakea. Attendees will discuss new fiber sensing technologies and view a special demonstration of optical frequency microcombs.