Fluves contributes to award-winning AI innovation in fiber optic sensing

How can AI help turn the large volumes of data generated by fiber optic sensing into useful information for critical infrastructure monitoring?

As a partner in AI FORSchung, Fluves brought its pipeline monitoring expertise into an international research collaboration focused on this challenge. By providing real-world data, conducting dedicated monitoring experiments, developing and evaluating algorithms, and defining practical requirements, Fluves helped ensure that new AI approaches were tested against the realities of pipeline monitoring.

The project has now received the 2026 ITEA Award of Excellence in the Innovation category, recognizing its development of AI-enhanced fiber optic sensing solutions across utilities, civil infrastructure, and healthcare.

Less data, without losing what matters

Continuous fiber optic monitoring generates large volumes of data that need to be transmitted, stored, processed, and translated into useful information.

AI FORSchung demonstrated that this data can be significantly compressed without compromising reliability. In pipeline and infrastructure applications, the project achieved compression factors of five to ten, helping reduce storage requirements, retain data longer, and accelerate analysis.

The project also advanced anomaly detection, supporting faster and more accurate identification of events such as potential pipeline leaks and intrusions.

Advancing Fluves' technology through collaborative research

For Fluves, AI FORSchung was an opportunity to go beyond research and accelerate the development of our own pipeline monitoring technology through collaboration with leading research institutions and industry experts. Throughout the project, Fluves combined its practical experience in fiber optic sensing with the consortium's AI expertise. Our team contributed to algorithm development and evaluation, conducted dedicated experimental monitoring campaigns, and helped ensure that new approaches were assessed against real-world pipeline monitoring requirements.

Importantly, the collaboration also supported improvements to our DALI technology, including dashboard upgrades and enhancements to our internal development processes. These developments strengthened our existing capabilities while creating a foundation for future innovation. By participating in AI FORSchung, Fluves was able to benefit directly from the exchange of knowledge and expertise, translating collaborative research into improvements to our own technology rather than limiting our contribution to research alone.

Why AI FORSchung received the Innovation Award

AI FORSchung received the 2026 ITEA Award of Excellence in the Innovation category for successfully developing AI-enhanced fiber optic sensing solutions across the diverse fields of healthcare, civil infrastructure, and utilities. ITEA highlighted the project's significant technical innovation, including advanced compression methods and hybrid-AI anomaly detection that outperformed current state-of-the-art approaches. The project also brought together research and industry partners from different sectors, allowing these technologies to be developed and evaluated against a broad range of real-world requirements.

From award-winning research to customer value

What does this recognition mean for Fluves and our customers?

Our participation in AI FORSchung demonstrates how we use collaborative research to continuously develop our monitoring solutions. Working alongside international experts allows us to explore emerging technologies, challenge existing approaches, and apply relevant findings to our own development.

For our customers, the value lies in monitoring technology that continues to evolve with their operational needs. Improvements to our DALI technology and dashboard support our ongoing efforts to make complex monitoring information easier to interpret and help operators make better-informed decisions about their pipelines.

The project also provided valuable knowledge and new experimental data that can support future developments across our monitoring solutions, creating opportunities to address additional infrastructure monitoring challenges.

As fiber optic sensing continues to generate increasingly large volumes of data, collecting information is only part of the challenge. The real value comes from knowing what matters and being able to act on it. Our focus is on turning technological innovation into practical monitoring solutions that help customers better understand, manage, and protect their critical infrastructure.

About AI FORSchung

AI FORSchung brought together an international consortium of industry and research partners from Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands, combining expertise in AI, healthcare technology, infrastructure monitoring, utilities, and fiber optic sensing.

The project partners included Philips Medical Systems Nederland, Fluves, ACI Monitoring, Graz University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology, and Thunderbyte.AI.

The project was carried out within ITEA, the Eureka Cluster on software innovation, with public funding support from FFG,  VLAIO, and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).