9–12 Sept 2024
Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering
Europe/Prague timezone

Development and implementation of a monitoring network to real-time monitor the radon concentration levels in a large-scale Italian historical building

11 Sept 2024, 11:10
20m
room 103 (Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering)

room 103

Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering

Břehová 78/7 115 19 Prague 1 Czech Republic GPS. 50.0910372N, 14.4163028E
Oral presentation Methods of measurement for both radon and thoron - devices, metrological aspects Radon in civil engineering

Speaker

Mario Caprio (Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy))

Description

In the context of a comprehensive remediation project for a large-scale, historic Italian building utilized as a governmental workplace and containing over 1500 rooms, an advanced monitoring system has been implemented with dual objectives: i) to assess the effectiveness of the remediation interventions, ii) to monitor radon concentrations in all the sections of the entire structure after the remediation interventions, including to promptly trigger alerts in the event of anomalous radon level measured.
The monitoring network contains about 100 probes of type TSRE1, manufactured by Tesla company (now manufactured by Piketronic company), that are connected to both a power supply, allowing to collect radon concentration continuously, and an ethernet network, enabling real-time data transmission. The probes are capable of measuring not only radon concentrations but also environmental parameters such as temperature and humidity.
Monitors have been distributed in all the 4 main levels of the building containing rooms, from the ground floor up to the third floor. The building's layout for these 4 levels is characterized by a configuration of seven corridors, with rooms at both sides of each corridor: a central corridor in a square shape, flanked by three additional corridors on both the left and right sides. A probe has been placed in 3 rooms of each corridor, for a total of about 80 probes.
Moreover, at the underground level where the remediation system, composed by several fan, is located, a probe has been placed in proximity to nearly each fan, for a total of about 20 probes. These probes have a crucial role because they allow to verify the proper functioning of the remediation system.
Data from each detector is collected by a double redundant system. The first system allows the downloading (both on site or by remote connection) from each probe of measurements performed and stored over time by an internal solid-state memory. The second system (backup system) consists of an ad-hoc software, developed in the R CRAN framework, to interrogate all probes every hour. This software allows to obtain, for each single premise, plots showing how the radon concentration varies over time, together with the mean radon concentration by last day, week and whole data collection period. In addition, the mean radon concentration values, grouped by floor and/or block, are calculated and plotted.

Authors

Mario Caprio (Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy)) Mr Marco Ampollini (Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy)) Dr Barbara Caccia (Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy)) Dr Carmela Carpentieri (Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy)) Mr Vittorio Dante (Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy)) Christian Di Carlo (Italian National Institute of Health) Mr Erminio Petetti (Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy)) Dr Silvia Pozzi (Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy)) Mr Stefano Valentini (Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy)) Dr Francesco Bochicchio (Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy))

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