Speaker
Description
The information disseminated by official entities about the radiation situation and associated health effects post-Fukushima Daiichi incident emphasised a limited impact on human health, although it does not offer specific details to clarify this position. On the other hand, a climate of suspicion emerged, and the public sphere was quickly saturated with speculation, hearsay, rumours, and alleged confidential information.
In this situation of uncertainty, citizen monitoring and radiation maps built on freely available software began to play an important role in public information. These civic radiation maps assisted people in regaining control of the reality fractured by the earthquake, tsunami, and, consequently, the NPP disaster. The maps showed actual radiation levels, which helped assess the credibility of official press releases or circulating (catastrophic) rumours.
The current geopolitical situation in Europe raises the question of whether risk management procedures and technological solutions are up to date to deal with scenarios involving threats from war or armed conflict.
The project CITISTRA aims to examine the feasibility and procedures for using citizen measurements in relation to different national legal frameworks and social and cultural habits through an experimental study in three countries: the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, and Poland.
In the presentation, we review the current legislation in Slovakia and analyse the potential use of citizen monitoring data as a supplement to official radiation monitoring network data, considering common requirements for (in-situ) radiation measurements.
This work has been supported by the Pianoforte Partnership project CITISTRA, which has received funding from the European Union’s “EURATOM” research and innovation program under the Grant agreement n. 101061037.
