Profiling Long-Distance Urban Near-Surface Structures with Temporary Fiber-Optic Sensing in Jinan City, China

Fine-scale urban underground exploration is vital for geological safety and hydrogeological protection. In spring-rich cities like Jinan, shallow structures—such as sedimentary layers and fault systems—act as critical regulators of groundwater migration and spring formation. Yet, traditional seismic methods are often hindered by high costs and complexity. While Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) offers a solution, its effectiveness is frequently limited by the poor coupling and coherent signal loss of existing cables in pipes. This study proposes an efficient alternative using mobile, unburied surface fiber-optic cables. Ten temporary DAS experiments were conducted along a 23 km line in Jinan, accompanied by nodal seismometers. Stable dispersion curves along the line can be extracted by subarray ambient noise interferometry with short-duration urban traffic noise DAS recording, and finally a high-resolution 2D S-wave velocity profile was mapped. The result shows that the profile has pronounced subsurface lateral heterogeneity, characterized by the alternation between two uplift zones and two grabens, which is highly consistent with H/V results from nodal seismometers. This confirms that mobile surface-cable DAS provides a rapid, reliable, and cost-effective imaging solution for characterizing complex urban subsurface structures, providing essential data for both geohazard assessment and the protection of groundwater transport pathways.