EURDEP: 20 years of radiological data sharing, Brussel

EURDEP Monitoring Platform

© EU 2015

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is organising the celebration of 20 years of EURDEP (European Radiological Data Exchange Platform) on the 23rd of November in Brussels, Belgium.

Under the Art. 35-36 of the Euratom Treaty, EU countries have to continuously monitor radioactivity in the air, water and soil, and to report it to the European Commission. In addition, in case of a radiological/nuclear accident, Council Decision 87/600 obliges EU Member States to submit at regular intervals information about the state of the emergency. This is done by means of the European Community Urgent Radiological Information Exchange (ECURIE) channels - EURDEP being an official part of ECURIE for facilitating the exchange of environmental monitoring data (currently gamma dose-rate and air concentration). With the implementation of these systems, the JRC and the Directorate-General for Energy have assisted the Member States in meeting their legal reporting obligations and allowing Candidate Countries to participate.

To recognise this landmark achievement, a high-level meeting will be held in November, including a key note speech of Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, Maros Sefcovic, European Commissioner for Energy, DG JRC Vladimir Sucha, and representative of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

EURDEP facilitates the transmission of large datasets from environmental radioactivity and emergency preparedness monitoring networks. It makes radiation dose rate data from 39 organisations in 37 European countries, from about 4500 automatic stations available on an hourly basis and in addition from some 100 air concentration monitoring stations on a daily basis during an emergency, as well as under normal conditions.

On a global level, the JRC assists the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in developing its International Radiation Monitoring Information System (IRMIS), which was recently adopted on the basis of the EURDEP system. In this worldwide context, EURDEP will continue to act as the European real-time monitoring information exchange network and the European Commission (through the JRC and the Directorate-General for Energy) will remain the EU contact point for IRMIS. In addition, the JRC is providing technical assistance to the Incident an Emergency Centre of the IAEA for testing the data exchange with its member states outside Europe. The EURDEP concept, as a regional data exchange system, is also serving as a prototype for setting up regional networks in other parts of the world.