Alice Sai Louie: Breaking the Wall of Hidden Waters
2nd place winner!
Shallow groundwater flooding, exacerbated by climate change, threatens many low-lying cities globally.
We lack a high spatial resolution method to measure shallow groundater over large areas. By repurposing existing dark strands of fibre optic telecommunications networks with Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS), measuring temperature could enable real-time groundwater monitoring of shallow groundwater dynamics across extensive regions, allowing for improved water management.
Alice is a research scientist at Lincoln Agritech Ltd, as well as a PhD candidate at the University of Canterbury. Alice’s current research focuses on surface water-groundwater interaction in braided rivers, investigating how river loss varies seasonally at a high spatial resolution. Her research uses heat as a tracer using novel Active-Distributed Temperature Sensing (A-DTS) methods. She is
also interested in exploring new uses of fibre optic technologies for environmental sensing.