Numlock Sunday: Christian Elliott on subsea cables that can monitor for tsunamis
By Walt Hickey
Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.
This week, I spoke to writer Christian Elliott who wrote These underwater cables can improve tsunami detection for MIT Technology Review. Here's what I wrote about it:
The Joint Task Force for Science Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications Subsea Cables — do you get the acronym? — is an initiative of the United Nations that wants to install pressure, acceleration and temperature sensors on the repeaters of new undersea telecom cables. Repeaters occur approximately every 50 kilometers on undersea cables and amplify signals, and the point would be to have the sensors transmitting so researchers on land can monitor for tsunamis. The subsea telecom industry is a $5 billion per year business, and it’s been tough to convince it to add extra stuff to their equipment, but recent events in Tonga have renewed calls. A SMART cable between New Caledonia and Vanuatu could bring the tsunami warning time there to 12 minutes, up fro…