Tue, 2022-04-19

There is significant potential in the use of unmanned remote-controlled vehicles in sampling and measurements in radiological incidents.
To this purpose, this document summarizes the need for and the possible use of robots carrying RN measurement equipment, by defining the minimum required capabilities of radiological detection systems that use robots in a set of scenarios in real environments.
The document also specifies test methods and facilities to verify that robotic equipment, components and complete systems comply with the minimum required capabilities, pointing out standardization needs for Member States and regulatory limitations on the use of radioactive material for testing, including radiological crime scenes. Furthermore, the future possibilities for using robots are assessed as well as improvements and additional needs, potentially expanded to all CBRNE materials.

Fri, 2019-09-13

Fri, 2019-09-13

Fri, 2017-12-22

Abstract

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in collaboration with the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT) organised a two and a half-day workshop on expert support and reachback entitled Magic Maggiore at the JRC Ispra, Italy in 28-30 March 2017.
Through a series of presentations, case studies, panel discussions, and a demonstration exercise, Magic Maggiore helped raise awareness and build commitment towards technical reachback. Furthermore, the workshop presented best practices to address key challenges, and identified areas for future work in this field. The workshop included a real-time detection and reachback exercise of a hypothetical nuclear security incident, put on between the JRC (Ispra) and France (Paris). The demonstration focused on core components of alarm adjudication and information exchange between front-line officers, a national reachback centre, and an advanced centralised reachback centre located in Paris.
A list of concrete post-workshop activities has been generated. The purpose of the list is to pave the way for the identification of the next steps towards development of European capabilities for nuclear security and in more general, for CBRNE security.
Reachback is necessary for alarm adjudication to provide timely information for a balanced response. Information sharing between competent authorities is of vital importance for nuclear security. Due to the variety of responsibilities, Technical, Scientific and Operational support needs to be defined. The Member States should consider developing joint protocols on data structures and data handling to ease the information flow and so the response time.

Wed, 2016-03-16

Abstract

As part of its 2015 work programme, the RN thematic group collected views from the EU Member States regarding this report as a key step in the work towards future European format and protocol standardisation to be implemented for technical reachback and other analysis purposes.

The group designed a simple questionnaire, which was sent to the relevant authorities in the Member States. The answers (10 out of 28) came from very different organisations working in the domains of security, safety or the military. The different backgrounds of the responding organisations show that responsibility for nuclear and radiological matters, including information sharing in a nuclear security event, varies strongly between different Member States. This knowledge alone is an important outcome of the questionnaire.

Some replies showed that much work needs to be done in raising European awareness regarding the prevention and detection of and the response to nuclear security events, including information sharing nationally and internationally. Some Member States have not yet identified the need for cooperation in sharing nuclear spectrometric data and analysis results.

One of the basic requirements of the proposed new information-sharing system for nuclear security is that advanced national analysis resources be provided for Member States that do not have such capabilities. Even though the future arrangements for information sharing would be based on a standard technological structure, all data exchange would be voluntary and bilateral between the Member States.

Wed, 2017-03-08

There is a significant potential in the use of unmanned remote-controlled vehicles in sampling and measuring radiological incidents. There are no standardised sampling and measurement methods using these types of vehicles. Common standards would simplify the use of remote-controlled vehicles in an emergency scenario and would thus be very valuable in critical infrastructure protection (CIP). The main advantage of using unmanned systems in radiological incidents is the protection of the human personnel involved.

This report is about the current state of the art of the unmanned systems that have potential to be used for radiation measurements and sampling. Search and rescue robotics is the domain that is closest to the robots applicable to the radiation measurement scenarios. In the report a definition of search and rescue robots and outlines of their major subsystems are given. This is followed by a review of deployment scenarios for search and rescue robots outlining case studies of major emergencies at which robots have been deployed. In addition, assessment of their value to the emergency services is given. Additionally, research and development in search and rescue robotics, including current projects, testing environments and search and rescue robotics competitions, are outlined.

This report shows unmanned robots and concepts for sensor systems capable of radiation detection based on state-of-the-art radiation sampling using unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles with rotary wings or unmanned aerial vehicles with fixed wings.

Tue, 2016-04-05

Abstarct

This is the third deliverable of task three of our ERNCIP thematic group for radiological and nuclear threats to critical infrastructure. This is the only report for this year in this task about remote controlled radiation measurements and sampling using unmanned systems. We made up questions for a survey with experts from the RN and from the robotics communities that we circulated through different channels like mailing lists and professional social media groups. In this report, we present the questionnaire and then discuss the outcome of the survey that we held this year to raise public interest in this topic and to get more insights and additional views from experts in this field and related subjects. One further aim was to extract information out of the experts and to bring the different communities of roboticists and RN experts together. We succeeded in getting information from scientists especially from the robotics community, as they are well represented in the answers, but we lack of answers from industries and end-user communities. Most of the answerers agreed on the scenarios that we identified in “Possible scenarios for radiation measurements and sampling using unmanned systems” - EUR 27225. About additional sensors, most  people suggested to include position and time to radiation measurements. The answers on bottlenecks and future topics points to robot’s manoeuvrability, autonomy and communication as well as decontamination and human robot interaction.

Wed, 2017-02-08

Abstract

A summary of the activities of the RN Thematic Group of ERNCIP in 2016 is reported. The Group organized its work in three sub-topics: awareness raising on a new standard on list-mode data acquisition, robotics in RN field and reachback (expert support to field teams). The work of the Group is based on the Work Programme 2016 developed at the end of March 2016.

Thu, 2016-05-19

Tue, 2016-04-26

Abstract

In the frame of Commission Mandate M/487 'Security standards', CEN/TC 391 assigned the highest priority to the standardisation of list-mode data, together with three other standardisation proposals. In response, the JRC ERNCIP Thematic Group on Radiological and Nuclear Threats to Critical Infrastructure described the state-of-the-art on list-mode data acquisition and proposed the basic elements of a standard data format. In addition, the RN Thematic Group conducted a survey addressed to users of digital data acquisition for nuclear instrumentation to investigate their needs with respect to the standardisation of the data format. This report presents the results of the survey, which will serve as an important input for the development of a preliminary draft standard that will accompany a New Work Item Proposal for a new international standard, to be submitted to the IEC in the frame of the EMPIR Project 14SIP07 'DigitalStandard', which will continue on the work initiated by the ERNCIP RN Thematic Group.