Historically, the deployment of oceanographic sensors with real-time communications has proven to be demanding in terms of budget, deployment and support requirements.

SMART (Science Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications) cables are  telecommunications cables designed to deliver real-time remote sensing of the ocean floor alongside traditional telecommunication objectives.

A global SMART Cable initiative has been exploring a number of ways in which these sensors could be integrated into commercially standard telecommunication cables to create SMART cable systems.

In December 2023, Güralp, working with Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), successfully deployed the Worlds first ‘SMART Cable’ to monitor seismic activity and tsunami risk in the Ionian Sea.

The 'demonstrator' project proved that, with the appropriate selection of instruments, cable repeaters could be retrospectively fitted with seismic instrumentation; laid using traditional cable laying methods and; coupled sufficiently with the sea-floor to deliver good quality seismic data.

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As SMART cables are deployed from the surface to deep on the seafloor via a cable-laying vessel, their final resting position or bearing is not fully controllable.

Traditional broadband seismic sensors can withstand a tolerance of just a few degrees from level, or they require gimbals that will re-orientate them. Güralp’s broadband seismometer addresses this issue using novel and unique technology.

We have developed unique omni-directional seismic sensors cable of delivering high quality seismic data regardless of the angle they are deployed at and without the need for mechanical gimbals.

This feature makes them the ideal choice for challenging deployments such as cable deployments from a ship. We also have demonstrable success with these same sensors in our traditional ocean bottom systems with excellent results.

In addition to our seismic sensors, we can also incorporate research grade temperature sensors for monitoring sea floor oceanographic conditions and absolute pressure gauges (APGs) for tsunami warning systems.

You can read more about our experience with ocean bottom systems here.

The advocacy for the SMART cable concept is currently led by the ITU-UNESCO/IOC-WMO Joint Task Force (“JTF”), established in 2012 by the United Nations to investigate the potential of using submarine telecommunications cables for ocean and climate monitoring and disaster warning. This Project is hosted by the Ocean Decade programme, Ocean Observing Co-Design: Evolving ocean observing for a sustainable future.

The JTF collaborates with a number of public and private organisations to assess and develop technologies that have the potential to make SMART cables feasible (Howe et al., 2022).

Güralp is proud to be driving instrumentation design in line with the current JTF vision.