A preliminary study of environmental monitoring using embedded sensors in the soil

Abstract

Green infrastructure is a stormwater management technique that can be used to mitigate urban floods and heat islands. However, proactive monitoring and control is required to ensure its smooth operation. In particular, determining evapotranspiration, an essential process in biosphere–atmosphere interactions in cities that maintain cultivated and irrigated landscapes, is challenging. Understanding activities that govern evapotranspiration in a wide range of shallow soils is useful for planning and operation of green spaces. Recently, distributed fiber-optic sensors for monitoring civil structures and infrastructure have opened up new possibilities compared with conventional sensor systems. They operate based on the principle that strain variation in the soil is linked to environmental factors such as temperature and soil moisture changes. In this research, we examined the relationship between strain and temperature/soil moisture changes. By embedding fiber-optic strain sensors and other sensors in the soil tank, we investigated the feasibility of the sensors in a simulated soil environment.