Radioactivity Monitoring in Ocean Ecosystems (RAMONES).

Mertzimekis, T.J.; Nomikou, P.; Petra, E.; Batista, P.; Cabesinhas, D.; Pascoal, A.M.; Sebastião, L.; Escartín, J.; Kebkal, K.; Karantzalos, K.; Mallios, A.; Nikolopoulos, K.; Maigne., L.

Abstract

Natural radioactivity in the marine environment has been present since the Earth's formation, while artificial radionuclides were introduced into the oceans in 1944. More recent direct sources exist that feed the oceans, such as low-level liquid discharges from reprocessing plants, large-scale releases due to disasters (e.g. Fukushima hit by the tsunami in 2011), and smaller-scale radiological events. Exploration of submarine environments should consider the existence of radioactivity in terms of its short- and long-term impact on marine and coastal ecosystems, also in correlation to natural hazards, such as seismic activity over submarine faults or activity of hydrothermal vent fields near the seabed. Significantly undersampled in oceans, radioactivity poses real risks to marine ecosystems and human population, urging for detailed, data-driven modeling.

RAMONES is a new H2020-EU FET Proactive Project [2] aiming to offer new and efficient solutions for in in situ, continuous, long-term monitoring of radioactivity in harsh subsea environments. A new generation of submarine radiation sensing instruments, assisted by state-of-the-art (SoA) robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will be developed towards understanding radiation related risks near and far from coastal areas, while providing data towards shaping new policies and guidelines for environmental sustainability, economic growth and human health, offering a framework for defining future environmental intelligence guidelines and practices.

The main ambition is to lay a radical new path to close the existing marine radioactivity under-sampling gap and foster new interdisciplinary research in threatened natural deep-sea ecosystems. RAMONES will invest a significant effort to provide tools for long-term, rapid deployments, propose new robotics and AI-driven supported methodologies, and offer scaled-up solutions to researchers, policy makers and communities. RAMONES will combine SoA equipment from various disciplines and advanced modeling in fine synergy, and design new and effective approaches for the marine environment to provide efficient response to natural and man-made hazards, shaping future policies for the global population.

Citation

Mertzimekis, T., Nomikou, P., Petra, E., Batista, P., Cabesinhas, D., Pascoal, A., …Maigne., L. (2021). Radioactivity Monitoring in Ocean Ecosystems (RAMONES). In GoodIT '21: Proceedings of the Conference on Information Technology for Social Good. https://doi.org/10.1145/3462203.3475906

• Conference Name: GoodIT '21: Proceedings of the Conference on Information Technology for Social Good
• Conference Location: Rome, Italy
• Start Date: Sep 9, 2021
• End Date: Sep 11, 2021
• Acceptance Date: Jan 1, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Sep 9, 2021
• Publication Date: 2021-09
• Deposit Date: Nov 19, 2021
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Book Title: GoodIT '21: Proceedings of the Conference on Information Technology for Social Good
• ISBN: 9781450384780
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3462203.3475906
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1695914