EMSO-Ligure Nice, a Coastal Cabled Observatory Dedicated to the Study of Slope Stability

Thanks to a fruitful collaboration between Ifremer (Institut français pour l’exploitation de la mer), Geoazur and CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), a subsea cabled observatory has been operating offshore Nice (France) since 2015. It is intended to collect measurements of several instruments (seismometer and piezometers) in an area recognized as a natural laboratory for the study of the underlying mechanisms of submarine slope failures. The observatory is made up of two subsea stations, connected to a shore station by an electro-optical cable. All the components of the infrastructure and instruments can be remotely accessed through the internet. The measurements of the instruments are automatically transmitted to data centers. They can be visualized and downloaded on web portals.