During the early phase of an accident with the release of
radioactive material to the environment at the local or transboundary scale, a
rapid and continuous system of information exchange, including real-time
monitoring data to competent authorities and the public, is critical for setting
up countermeasures. This information and data exchange must be carried out
in a harmonized and consistent manner to facilitate its interpretation and
analysis. After the Chernobyl accident in 1986, and in order to avoid
the competent authorities being unprepared again for a similar event, the European
Commission (EC) defined and put in place a directive (Council Decision
87/600/EURATOM, 1987) which essentially obliges a member state that decides to
implement widespread countermeasures to protect its population to notify the
European Commission without delay. The same Council Decision also specifies
that the results of radiological monitoring must be made available to the
European Commission and all potentially affected member states. Over the past 30
years, the European Commission has invested resources in developing and
improving a complete system to carry out this delicate task, currently
composed of two platforms: the European Community Urgent Radiological
Information Exchange (ECURIE) and the European Radiological Data Exchange Platform (EURDEP). This paper aims to increase knowledge of the latter
system as a valuable tool for understanding and analysing the radioactivity levels
in Europe. Commencing with background information, in this paper, we will
describe the EURDEP system in detail, with an emphasis on its status, data
availability, and how these data are diffused depending on the audience.
Within the scope of this publication, we describe an example of measurements
available in the EURDEP system, which to be used for scientific purposes. We
provide two complete datasets (air-concentration samples –
The severe accident that occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) on 26 April 1986 led to a large release of radioactivity to the environment, and
large areas of the Europe were contaminated, as can be seen, for example, in
the
Over the past 30 years, the European Commission (EC) has invested
in improving the rapid exchange of information and data during R/N
emergencies (De Cort et al., 2011). In 1987, and in order to avoid the
authorities being as unprepared for future accidents of a similar scale,
the EC defined and put in place a directive (Council Decision
87/600/EURATOM, 1987) which essentially obliges a country that decides to
implement widespread measures for the protection of its population to notify
the EC without delay. The resulting early notification system was named the
European Community Urgent Radiological Information Exchange (ECURIE). The
same Council Decision also specifies that results of radiological monitoring
be exchanged. The resulting mechanism for this task was named the
European Radiological Data Exchange Platform (EURDEP;
Keen interest and high motivation for EURDEP have promoted continuous growth since its creation. Beginning with six countries exchanging monitoring data from about 300 stations in various national data formats by e-mail once per week in 1985, EURDEP has evolved to its current state, with 39 countries capable of exchanging real-time monitoring information collected from more than 5500 automatic surveillance systems (up to once per hour during an emergency) in a standard data format through secure ftp and web services. Such a large-scale harmonized data-exchange system for radioactivity measurements is unique in the world. Figure 1 shows the progress of participation in the EURDEP network from 1996 to 2019. It is worth mentioning that the participation in EURDEP for European Union member states is mandatory, and the exchange of off-site monitoring data during a radiological accident is an official obligation as required under the 87/600 Council Decision. Participation of non-EU countries in EURDEP is voluntary but then, in most cases, subject to a country-specific memorandum of understanding (MoU).
Progress of participating networks in EURDEP. The 40 networks in 2019 are composed of 38 European countries' networks plus Canada (since 2013) and the Decommissioning and Waste Management (DWM) JRC stations located in Ispra, Italy (since 2008). JRC network is operated by EC staff because it is part of EC territory although located in Italy.
This paper aims to increase knowledge regarding the existence of the EURDEP
system as a valuable medium, which can be used for better understanding and
analysing radioactivity levels in Europe. Within the scope of this
publication, we aim at describing the unique collection of measurements
stored in the EURDEP system since 2002 and at providing access to
relevant datasets to the scientific community. While many of the data have
previously been used for various purposes within refereed or scientific
applications (e.g. Bossew et al., 2012, 2017; Szegvary et al., 2007),
complete datasets for specific radiological events (e.g. De Cort et al.,
2019a, b) have never been integrally published. In the case of a radiological
event, this extensive network collects and publishes valuable information to
be potentially used for scientific purposes, such as verification of models
of source term evaluation and reconstruction, documentation of temporal
and spatial evolution of radioactivity, etc. This information is also useful
for people studying risks associated to planned and unplanned releases and
for testing models that require spatial data. An example of a dataset within
the EURDEP system is the recent
Section 2 describes the EURDEP monitoring network, while Sect. 3 focuses on
EURDEP data as well as the applied quality control methodology. Section 4
describes the method of exchanging data via the EURDEP system and how data
are made accessible to different audiences, while Sect. 5 presents the
data which are available on EURDEP for the 2017
The Chernobyl accident resulted in increased radioactivity levels over most
of Europe (e.g. Evangeliou et al., 2016). Although several European
countries had, by 1986, already developed automatic monitoring networks and in
some cases had established bilateral agreements for the exchange of this
information, the magnitude of the Chernobyl accident (e.g. Steinhauser et
al., 2014) demonstrated the need to extend such schemes to the continental
scale. Subsequent to the accident, many additional countries set up
GDR-based automatic monitoring networks for delineating the radioactive
cloud and, in parallel, decided to, without legal obligations, participate
in the international data-exchange mechanism EURDEP in order to benefit from
the availability of Europe-wide measurements during both routines and
emergencies.
GDR networks have rather disparate station locations due to differences in
the design of national networks. Such differences are in general a
consequence of national approaches and policies. The design of the topology
of a GDR-monitoring network can be based on several factors, such as threat
analyses, the enlargement of the area to be monitored, the density of the
population, and the geological topography of the covered area. In addition,
the purpose of the network (alert function only or other functions) and its
required technical performance (e.g. spatial resolution) are factors which
have an effect on the location of the monitoring sites. As can be seen in
Fig. 2, countries apply some of the following considerations when siting
their monitoring stations:
Monitoring stations are placed to form a regular grid covering the entire country. Monitoring stations are mostly placed at the border of the country,
frequently used by countries which do not have national facilities which may
cause a radiological release. Monitoring stations are mostly placed around sites at risk, i.e. around NPPs. Monitoring stations are mostly placed in the surrounding of the most densely
populated areas, following the logic that this layout caters to more
accurately gauged countermeasures for the local population.
In the early stages of EURDEP development, only ADR (ambient dose rate)
measurements were exchanged, but over the years other sample types were
added. The Fukushima accident showed once more the importance of air-concentration data and also – as experienced in Europe – that only HVASs
(high-volume air samplers) are capable of measuring the extremely low level
of contaminants in the air caused by a distant accident. More modern
air-concentration sampling stations are fully automated, online, and
connected to the national data centres so that the data reach EURDEP with
minimum delay. Most of air sampling stations, however, are offline,
their filters are manually replaced once or twice per week, and the
measurements are then carried out in laboratories; in this case, the delay
with which air-concentration data from these stations are available on
EURDEP can be more than a week. To reduce costs and to make nuclide-specific
data available more quickly, a few European countries have begun using
spectrometric probes. Although the sensitivity of this type of probe is much
lower than a HVAS station, they can give very valuable results during a
local emergency where a higher level of contaminants may occur. As of
February 2019, 14 countries exchange nuclide-specific data, and, among them,
Switzerland, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Finland, Hungary,
Norway, and Lithuania regularly send air-concentration data, which are of
utmost importance during an accident.
Screenshot of the EURDEP “expert map” showing the locations of the gamma-dose-rate-monitoring stations (Copyright © European Commission. DG. JRC, REM 2009–2019).
The existence of the EURDEP platform has contributed significantly to the harmonization of the data format and procedures related to the collection of measured radioactivity in Europe in the last 2 decades. The EURDEP format allows indicating, for each measurement, whether the data are non-verified (NV), verified (V), or non-plausible (NP). Because the system allows changing this attribute by “overwriting” already submitted measurements and/or by editing single measurements via the restricted website, the data providers can send data even before they are verified so as to have the latest measurements available to all users with the minimum possible delay. Hence, most of the measurements presented on the restricted website are non-verified data, which means that meteorological conditions such as heavy rain or snow, or defects in the instruments, electronics, or software, can result in deviations from the true value. Consequently, isolated seemingly alarming levels on the map cannot automatically be taken as an indication of increased levels of radioactivity. Even if several nearby stations show such increased values, it does not necessarily imply an actual increase in radiation levels. Some data providers verify the data and then update the measurements with the “verified” attribute, while other data providers prefer to leave the data as NV in the system and only to delete or update measurements that did not pass the national verification controls.
ADR measurements (expressed in nSv h
An ideal site for ADR monitoring stations is on extensive flat grassland on natural undisturbed ground, with no obstacles in a circle of at least 20 m at minimum, and at the height of 1 m above the ground. In this sense, the way in which a detector is installed strongly influences its readings (e.g. installing on a wall or a roof in town can give considerably different results from the same probe). In addition, the height above mean sea level of the station, different background levels, and probe characteristics such as the self-effect contribute to differences in the exchanged measurements that are not relevant to the real radiological situation (e.g. Bossew et al., 2017). In this sense, the availability of the station properties allows a better evaluation of the measurements and estimating the artificial contribution to the ADR, in the case of a R/N event, by subtracting self-effect, cosmic radiation, and terrestrial background from the reported measurement.
For the purpose of ADR data harmonization, it is worth mentioning projects such
as AIRDOS, MetroERM (
The impact in Europe of the Fukushima accident, although air concentrations
remained far below levels which could have caused radiological concern
(Bossew et al., 2012), showed the importance of being able to measure the
extremely low level of contaminants in the air, caused by either far-away
or small-scale accidents. Since 2015, EURDEP stakeholders consider the exchange of air-concentration data (samples) to be a high-priority item. The recent
Air concentration data which are considered to be a priority during an accident
and are routinely sent to EURDEP are
EURDEP also contains data of total-beta radiation (Bq m
During the years, meteorological data were added to the exchange within the EURDEP system. Weather parameters influence the radiological levels; e.g. atmospheric pressure, snow, and rain can change the amount of radon that is released from the soil, and rain can be the cause of higher readings because of radon wash-out effects, while wind strength and direction can help in estimating where and how fast aerosols will move (e.g. Bossew et al., 2017). The scope of this exchange of meteorological information is therefore to facilitate the interpretation of the radiological values, both during routines and emergencies, and to better understand if an increased radioactivity level is caused by natural or artificial events. To this purpose, information about pressure, temperature, wind direction, wind-speed, precipitation, precipitation occurrence, precipitation duration, precipitation intensity, relative humidity, and solar radiation is exchanged through the EURDEP system. However, not all countries deliver this kind of data yet. Countries that send meteorological data (status of February 2019) are the following: BG, BY, CY, CZ, FI, GR, HR, HU, IE, IT, MT, NO, PL, RO, RS, and SI. It is worth noting that the meteorological information transmitted through the network originates from the corresponding EURDEP monitoring station and not from a dedicated one.
All data exchanged via EURDEP are subjected to copyright of the original data provider and cannot be used for other purposes, including scientific research, without authorization.
There are two ways of exchanging radiological data in EURDEP. During routines, the monitoring data are made available by the participating organizations at least once a day, while during an N/R emergency, each organization makes data available at least once every 2 h. In practice, more and more organizations make their national data available on an hourly basis both during routine and during emergency conditions.
An essential condition for exchanging and comparing data at the international
level is the agreement about some common basic standards about data format
and exchange protocols. All data under EURDEP are exchanged using standard
formats and standard exchange protocols which are EURDEP proprietary, since
the 2013 data format and transmission protocol is compliant with the
requirements of the International Radiological Information Exchange (IRIX)
format. The IRIX standard, which was developed jointly by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the EC, and experts from the member states under
an IAEA action plan, is the recommended means of exchanging information among
emergency response organizations at national and international levels during
a nuclear or radiological emergency (Mukhopadhyay et al., 2018). In 2014, in
accordance with a 2010 MoU between EC and IAEA which sought to establish a
global radiological data-exchange system based on EURDEP, EURDEP started the
submission of the European radiological data to the International Radiation
Monitoring Information System (IRMIS,
Since the exchange of monitoring data at the international level plays a fundamental role during an emergency, it is obvious that high availability is a major asset. To address this target, EURDEP has been conceived with high redundancy. The EURDEP network has three central nodes, and each central node collects the monitoring data from all the national servers and makes it available, on ftp-servers, to all participants. The three nodes are located at the EC JRC in Ispra (Italy), the BfS in Freiburg (Germany), and the EC DG ENER (Directorate for Energy) in Luxembourg. The node at the JRC has a special function because it verifies all the data, loads them into a database, and makes them available for viewing and downloading through a web interface. All monitoring data are available and can hence be downloaded from these three sites.
Screenshot of the EURDEP Public Map. This map shows the maximum and the average value of total gamma dose rate for each hexagon considering the stations inside, which have reported measurements during the last 24 h, and considering values to be time-averaged values (© EC JRC).
As was stated in the Introduction, EURDEP is a tool for decision makers, providing notified and continuous real-time monitoring data to define the most appropriate countermeasures before a radioactive plume impacts the population. This fast and reliable availability of data is important because the radioactive plume can travel over large distances in a short time and in any direction, depending on the meteorology during the accident (e.g. the dispersion of radionuclides worldwide from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant; e.g. Povinec et al., 2013). To this purpose, the EURDEP Expert Map (restricted website) allows unlimited access to all monitoring data through various web services and other secure channels. This map allows downloading time series, which, in the case of an emergency, can be analysed to take the corresponding countermeasures to limit its impact on the population, and it has a role in confirming previous predictions and therefore the measures taken.
Nowadays, there is a growing concern with the public about the radioactivity
levels, the potential risk of future nuclear accidents, and the recovery
process in the aftermath of an accident (Sato and Lyamzina, 2018). In this
context, and based on the Council Decision 87/600/EURATOM, which also
specifies that monitoring data must be made available to the public, clear
and transparent communication is carried out through the EURDEP platform.
Most measurements of environmental radioactivity in the form of GDR
aggregated averages and maxima for the last 24 h from some 5500 GDRs in
37 European countries are made available through the public freely
accessible EURDEP website, which neither requires a license nor
subscription (Fig. 3). This public EURDEP website is placed in the
Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring (REM) group website (
Time series (day and month of year 2017) of gamma dose rate
recorded during the
Accidents with involvement of radiation sources occur, although infrequently. The IAEA database of nuclear and radiological incidents can be
consulted at
EURDEP data are collected and stored in the routine or emergency mode and
constitute a valuable archive of radiological measurements potentially used
for scientific purposes. We present here an example of two complete datasets
referring to a radiological event that can be retrieved from the EURDEP database.
The example chosen is the widespread detection of
EURDEP data of the
The fields made available for download for gamma dose rates are the following: two-letter country codes as supplied by the ISO
(International Organization for Standardization), monitoring station
identifier, locality identifier, longitude, latitude, date and time of the beginning
of measurement (yyyy-mm-dd, hh:mm:ss), date and time of the end of measurement
(yyyy-mm-dd, hh:mm:ss), and measurement value of the gamma dose rate (expressed as
nSv h For air-concentration activity the fields are as follows: two-letter country codes as supplied by the ISO
(International Organization for Standardization), sampling station
identifier, locality identifier, longitude, latitude, sample category
identifier radionuclide, measuring unit, date and time of beginning of sampling
(yyyy-mm-dd, hh:mm:ss), date and time of end of sampling (yyyy-mm-dd,
hh:mm:ss), and measurement value of concentration activity.
The fields made available for download are the following, in the same order
as specified hereafter.
The JRC's European Radiological Data Exchange Platform (EURDEP) makes radiological monitoring data widely available from most European countries in near real time. EURDEP facilitates the transmission of large datasets from environmental radioactivity and emergency preparedness monitoring networks, as requested by EU legislation between national authorities and the European Commission. It is an integrated part of the official European Commission's radiological and nuclear emergency arrangements, which gather data from 40 networks in 38 European countries plus Canada, mainly through 5500 automatic stations. Even in the current situation, there is not perfect inter-comparability of the ADR data because of the use of different probes and different siting characteristics and monitoring station topologies, but the current degree of harmonization and the availability of the station characteristics allow a practical use of the Europe-wide data both in periods with and without events.
Air-sample data communication is still scarce in comparison with ADR data.
Currently, about 14 countries regularly report standard radionuclides
(
EURDEP development activities at the EC are expected to need considerable resources in the future because of a continuous expansion of data providers and exchanged sample types and nuclides, and it is necessary to keep up with the continuous developments of the large number of national systems which participate to EURDEP. Future work will focus on extending the number of participating countries, transmitting more on-site meteorological data, expanding to the whole spectrum of sample types foreseen by the Euratom Treaty, refining measurements by applying filters for various natural background components and, last but not least, globalizing the system in collaboration with the IAEA.
At the time of writing this paper, KB oversees EURDEP development and maintenance and is the main reference for information, being the person responsible of the project. MS and MAHC are the main authors, and GC and KJ were the main reviewers and gave technical guidance.
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
We would like to acknowledge the work or the past 2 decades of the EEWG, without which the EURDEP platform would not have developed as it has.
This paper was edited by Jens Klump and reviewed by two anonymous referees.