The European Union Radiological Data Exchange Platform (EURDEP): 25 years of monitoring data exchange

Abstract. During the early phase of an accident with release of radioactive material to the atmosphere having an environmental impact at local or transboundary scale, a rapid and continuous notification and exchange of information including real-time environmental monitoring data to competent authorities and the public is essential to effect appropriate countermeasures. A rapid exchange of information and data must be carried out in a harmonised and consistent manner to facilitate its interpretation and analysis. After the Chernobyl accident in 1986, and in order to avoid that competent authorities be unprepared again for a similar event, the European Commission defined and put in place a Directive (Council Decision 87/600/EURATOM) 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 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 this latter system as a valuable tool to understand and analyse 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, to be used for scientific purposes. We provide two complete datasets (air concentration samples, http://data.europa.eu/89h/23cbc7c4-4fcc-47d5-a286-f8a4edc8215f (De Cort et al., 2019a) and gamma dose rates, http://data.europa.eu/89h/0f9f3e2d-c8d7-4f46-bbe7-eacf3eed1560 (De Cort et al., 2019b)) for the recent radiological release of 106Ru in Europe which occurred between the end of September and early October 2017. Records stored are publicly accessible through an unrestricted repository called “COLLECTION” belonging to JRC Data Public Catalogue ( https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu ).