European knowledge databases for radioactive contamination
The European Union's EURATOM Framework Programme has supported several research initiatives in order to optimise monitoring and assessment of occupational exposure. One of the projects, entitled IDEAS, focused on improving our knowledge regarding the assessment of radioactive contamination in humans in terms of internal dose. The work culminated in the creation of three extremely valuable databases. The first is the IDEAS Bibliography Database, which is a comprehensive list of references to research carried out on individuals that have been exposed to harmful levels of radiation. It provides a single resource for academics, institutes, and all interested parties. The second deliverable is the IDEAS Internal Contamination Database. It was constructed by the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre and comprises explicit data from over 200 cases of radioactive contamination. The database could be used in training exercises, model development and validation, comparative studies and many other applications. The final database is the IDEAS Evaluation of Cases Database, or EvalDB. EvalDB adds a layer of complexity to the IDEAS Internal Contamination Database as it contains information gathered during analysis of several of the 200+ case studies. More specifically, it includes summaries and evaluation results from 95 evaluations of 52 cases. In addition, EvalDB can be queried to produce targeted results pertaining to just one of the 17 radioisotopes covered, the level of contamination, the evaluator and so on. The IDEAS consortium plans to make the three IDEAS databases available to the research community in the near future. They are also interested in further enlarging the databases with new content provided by external organisations.
