Earth’s Pulse: SMART Cables in the Northern Hemisphere

The meeting will be held in ANACOM’s headquarters, Rua Ramalho Ortigão 51, Lisbon, 9:30 am-5:30 pm WEST (UTC-1).

Telecom submarine cables have traditionally served the single purpose of connectivity. However, thanks to the significant effort of the scientific community, they are becoming a multipurpose infrastructure at the service of science and society, in addition to telecommunications. In this way, submarine cables can be used for humanitarian purposes such as environmental sensing for climate and geohazard warnings serving science communities and people.

SMART (Scientific Monitoring And Reliable Telecommunications) submarine cables will play a decisive role in collecting real-time data directly from the bottom of the ocean, envisioning the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 13 – Climate, and SDG 14 – Oceans. The oceans control our weather and climate, and knowledge of changes in ocean circulation, heat content, and sea level rise will inform climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in the medium to long term. In the short term, timely early warnings for earthquakes and tsunamis will save lives.

New potential SMART Cables projects have recently been announced that will cross the North Atlantic, the Arctic and the North Pacific. Because the ocean is globally connected, SMART ocean measurements in these regions will affect our estimates of the state of the “Global Ocean”.

It is important to promote collaboration between these projects to achieve synergies, maximize benefits, while reducing costs.

In this context, an international meeting entitled “Earth's Pulse: SMART Cables in the Northern Hemisphere” will be co-organised by JTF SMART Cables (The SMART Cables Joint Task Force - SMART Cables) and ANACOM (ANACOM - Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações) on 4 October 2024, in Lisbon. The purpose of this meeting will be to discuss, debate and share the perspective of various national and international players, including operators, suppliers, academia, international organisations and other entities with an interest in the data collected by these SMART submarine cables. The aim is to discuss among experts ways of making better use of the data collected by future and potential SMART Cable systems (e.g., Atlantic CAM, PISCES, Far North Fiber, Polar Connect, TUSASS, MEDUSA, MISTS and Olisipo), as part of a SMART Cables network in the Northern Hemisphere that will serve as a decisive contribution to the creation of a future global sea floor observation network using SMART Cables.

The tentative meeting's agenda will include a range of topics:
·            presentation of the projects as potential SMART Cables;
·            technologies to be used;
·            identification of the benefits for science and society;
·            governance and data management.

Attendance is by invitation and the meeting will have a hybrid format, in person and remote (Q&As will run through the chat). 

If you would like to attend but did not receive an invitation, please email smartipo@hawaii.edu.