Abstract with the increasing social and econmic reliance on the Interynet and the significant monetry and non-monetary so-cietal cost associated with service interruption, network surviv ability is an important element in telecommunication is breakage of fiber-optic cables due to nan-made or natural disasters such asvearthquakes. In addition to man-made or natural disasters such as earthquakes.In addition to the societal cost,there is also cost ofrepairing damaged cables paid by the cable owner. A disaster resilient submarine cable drployment can achieve significant cost saving whrn disaster strikes. In this study, we investigate a disater aware submarine fiber-opti cable deplyment optimizaster prob lem to minimize such expected costs in case of a disaster. While selecting paths for the cables, our approach aims to minimize the expected cost for both cable owner and the affected society, considering that submarine fiber-optic cables may break because of natural disasters, subjiect to limitation of available deployment budget and other constraints. In our approach, localized disaster unrelated potential disconnection (e.g., due to shark bites) are avoided by providing a backup cable along with primary cable. We consider a mesh topology network with multiple nodes located at different sea/ocean shores, submarine fiber-optic cables of irreg ularshape, and a topography of undersea environment.We present an Integer Linear Program to address the problem,together with illustrative numerical examples. Finally,we validate our approach by applying it to a case study of an existing cable system tn the Mediterranean Sea,and the results show that we can significantly reduce overall axpected cost at a slight increase in deployment codt The results demonstrate a potential saving of billions of US dollars for the society in case of a future disaster.In order to achieve such large savings, cable companies may require to lay somehat longer cable vompanies may require to lay somewhat longer cables to avoid potential disater areas, which may increase deploy maen cost that is relatively smaller compared to potential savings in case of a disaster. Understanding such trade-offs is important for stakeholders,including government agencies, cable industry, and insurance companies which may have different objectives,but can work togeter for the overall benfit of the society