Information Requirements and Countermeasure Evaluation Techniques in Nuclear Emergency Management

The report describes the results of workshop on Decision analysis of clean-up actions in inhabited areas in Poland after an accidental release of radionuclides. The workshop was a part of the research project EVATECH, Information Requirements and Countermeasure Evaluation Techniques in Nuclear Emergency Management, in the key action Nuclear Fission in the fifth Euratom Framework Programme (FP5).

Within the EVATECH project of the 5th framework programme of the European Commission facilitated workshops are planned in a number of European countries to study the applicability of the workshop method and to learn about the practical needs of stakeholders. The intention is to improve decision making process and decision support systems and in particular to shape further their evaluation subsystems. The workshops considered a hypothetical scenario in which there had been an accidental release of radionuclides leading to the contamination environment. The theme of the workshop is the choice of possible clean-up actions in inhabited areas a week after the release. A variety of stakeholders is invited to evaluate the options that are available to protect the population and to clean up inhabited areas. This report describes the information package as a basic for the national facilitated workshops organised in different European country. The information package is planned to give all relevant information to understand the accident situation and to be able to make most applicable countermeasures. The material is to be sent to the workshop participants before the meeting.

EVATECH is a research project aiming for enhancement of quality and coherence of response to nuclear and radiological emergencies in Europe. The project is carried out within the key action Nuclear Fission in the 5th Euratom Framework Programme (FP5). EVATECH is one of the eleven projects in the FP5 dealing with off-site management of nuclear emergencies and restoration of contaminated environments. The objective of EVATECH is to improve the decision support methods, models and processes in ways that take into account the expectations and concerns of different stakeholders participating in decision making for the protection of members of the public and workers in a nuclear emergency situation. The project has ten partners from seven European countries. The project is divided into four work packages (WP). WP4 deals with workshops on clean-up actions after a nuclear accident. The French-German Institute for Environmental Research (DFIU) of the University of Karlsruhe and the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz (BfS) organised a national workshop in Germany. The workshop was held on the 24th and 25th of November 2003 in Freiburg at the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz. There were 19 participants from regional, state and federal authorities. The aim of the workshop was to explore the information and data requirements for the decision makers, to verify the factors driving decision making in the context of urban nuclear emergency management, to introduce the evaluation software Web-HIPRE and to develop methods for stakeholder involvement in exercises and emergency planning. The feedback from the attending stakeholders was positive and the logic behind Web-HIPRE was well accepted. The scenario based on the national case study was found appropriate for the purposes of the workshop. Possible enhancements were identified. As a result, a ranking of further development needs can now be constructed by comparing the results of the various national workshops within Europe.

Within the EURATOM 5th Framework Program in the key action area of Nuclear Fission and Radiation Protection, the EVATECH project - coordinated by the Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Institute (STUK) in Finland, aims at the development of methods for stakeholder involvement in exercises and emergency planning which will enhance public confidence and understanding in relation to nuclear emergency management: �{�improving planning and communication methods, especially for early phase of an accident; �{�to enhance negotiation methods for later phase of an accident; �{�to gain experience on countermeasure evaluation systems developed in the project. Furthermore, EVATECH is seeking to understand the nuclear emergency management process across Europe and the information and decision support needs of the decision makers therein. In the framework of the EVATECH project, the partners (B, SK, PL, DK and D) were to organize a decision workshop on recovery in an inhabited area following a nuclear accident. The idea of this workshop is to understand the needs of decision makers a few days after a radioactive release from a nuclear accident when considering the choice and implementation of early recovery actions in inhabited areas. The intention is to gain a broad overview of the issues and perceptions that will drive decision making on restoration in urban areas and it will not be necessary to get into any great detail.

This report is the first technical document showing the use of Web-Hipre with RODOS. The report is written to facilitate the use of Web-Hipre in the national workshops to be arranged in the work package 4 of EVATECH. Web-HIPRE (HIerarchical PREference analysis in the World Wide Web) is a Java-based software for decision analytic problem structuring, multi-criteria evaluation and prioritisation. Web-HIPRE is accessible on the web site http://www.hipre.hut.fi. Web-HIPRE provides different multi-criteria decision support methods for the evaluation of strategies. A detailed online introduction to the use of the diverse features of Web-HIPRE is available at http://www.hipre.hut.fi/WebHipre/Help.html and an introductory slide show can be found at http://www.sal.hut.fi/Publications/ppt-files/Web-HIPRE/. Users who have not worked with Web-HIPRE before should have a look at one of several online training courses that supply various case studies (using web space from the Systems Analysis Laboratory (SAL), Helsinki). These courses (available at http://www.mcda.hut.fi/) offer an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with the basic functionality of Web-HIPRE.

The report provides a summary of three workshops held in the UK to explore the information and decision support needs of decision makers faced with choices concerning possible clean-up actions a day or two after the release. Each workshop was based on a hypothetical accident scenario in which an accidental release of radionuclides led to some off-site contamination. The scenario used was tailored to represent a nuclear site that the participants of the workshop were familiar with. The objectives for each workshop were: - To identify and verify the factors driving decision making in a radiological emergency situation. - To explore the information needs of all parties involved in decision-making workshop. - To identify the forms of strategy that relevant organisations wish to consider for recovery in inhabited areas.

ESY-HIPRE is the evaluation subsystem of the RODOS decision support system for off-site nuclear emergency management. ESY-HIPRE aims at providing transparency in the decision making process. The ESY-HIPRE package of the RODOS system consists of the ESY pre-processor and Web-HIPRE, both of which components that can also be independently used. The ESY pre-processor is the latest version of the evaluation system of RODOS. It enables the user to select the data for Web-HIPRE. It will also launch the old version of the Heresy, now superseded by Web-HIPRE. Web-HIPRE is a generic Java-based multi-attribute evaluation software adapted for and integrated into the RODOS system. An Explanation Module, based on the Fine Expert System (FES) (K.N. Papamichail and S. French), was integrated into the evaluation software Web-HIPRE in order to enhance the understanding of the evaluation process and thus contributing to the direct involvement of the decision makers. Aiming at increasing the confidence of decision makers in the results of the system, the Explanation Module seeks to improve the acceptability of the whole system. A description of how each of these components work is given together with information on how they are linked to each other as well as with other RODOS modules. Detailed explanations and links to training material are given for Web-HIPRE since this is new software for the RODOS users.

This technical note, EVATECH(WP2)-TN(03)-01, progresses MBS's contribution to workpackage WP2 of the EVATECH project. This workpackage is briefly described in the annex of contract FIS5-2001-00113 as: The processes of management of nuclear emergencies will be surveyed and documented in four participating countries. Modern process modelling techniques will be used to produce a generic emergency management process model, which will be used for describing the emergency management processes in the UK, Belgium, Germany and Slovak Republic. This note focuses on Generic emergency management process template and methodology. Deliverable D3. We discuss the outline process template, which has been developed for the process modelling in the four countries, and applied in the modelling of the UK's emergency management.

The Danish EVATECH workshop took place the 15 January 2004 on Bernstroff Caste. The purpose of the workshop was to have facilitated discussion on urban radioactive contamination based on results produced by the ARGOS DSS. The facilitator and the organiser have attended a training workshop at STUK in facilitating workshops, but where in no way professional in this technique! The software development was not finished at the time of the workshop and it was decided to use ARGOS as it was because the organiser felt it was like cheating to use external software during the workshop it became clear that external software should have produced additional background material for the workshop! The outcome of the workshop is feed back into the ARGOS system development. It is planned to have an additional workshop to use the final software version.

In EVATECH project a training seminar on facilitated workshop was arranged at STUK in May 2003. The aim of the seminar was to train participants how to organise and facilitate a workshop supported by decision analysis methods. The seminar comprised of main principles in off-site nuclear emergency management, key issues in decision analysis, workshop facilitation and practical case study training with evaluation software. This report (EVATECH-TN (04)-01) collects together the relevant training material prepared for the seminar. The work is part of the EVATECH project (FIS5-2001-00113), which aims to explore the information and decision support needs of key players.

Different persons and organisations are responsible for planning, decision-making and implementation of countermeasures in various phases of an accident. At the accident site the operator or licensee is, in general, responsible for controlling the event, and, in many cases, also the first organisation to take initiative over immediate off-site protective actions based on plant status and emergency plans. In the longer term the decision-making is part of the country's administrative and legal system. Nowadays it is common that the decision-making takes place in groups of various size and composition. International organisations have recommended for many years that key players, e.g., authorities, expert organisations, industry, producer and even the public should be involved in the national planning for protective actions in case of a nuclear accident. The key players could be engaged in this decision-making process in various ways, e.g., by hearings, advisory committees, planning cells, panels, citizen juries, initiatives, and often by increased cost and complexity of the process (Renn et. al. 1995). Facilitated workshop is a model, which attempts to reconcile the different problem representations of the participants by group decision support. Facilitated workshop, also called decision conferencing, utilises decision theory and group process. It provides a methodology to aggregate all key players' concerns and issues openly and equally into the decision. The aims of the workshop are to achieve a shared understanding of the issues and a mutual commitment to action (Phillips and Phillips 1993). Facilitated workshops seem to fit well in planning of protective actions in advance or in the analytical part of a decision-making process. They provide a forum where key players that have expertise in various areas can analyse and evaluate alternative options that are subject to open debate before the formal decision-making.

The facilitated workshop on Decision analysis of clean-up actions in inhabited areas in the Slovak Republic after an accidental release of radionuclides was conducted in November 2003 in Slovakia. The workshop was run within the research project EVATECH, Information Requirements and Countermeasure Evaluation Techniques in Nuclear Emergency Management, undertaken as part of the key action Nuclear Fission in the fifth EURATOM Framework Programme (FP5). The report describes the accident scenario, recommended countermeasures and clean-up actions as well as workshop arrangements, attributes relevant for the analysis, analysis of the problem, results and conclusions of the facilitated workshop.

According to the Description of Work of the EVATECH project a training seminar on facilitated workshops was arranged at STUK in 12-14 May 2003. Objective of the seminar was to train persons to facilitate workshops to be arranged in all the seven countries participating in the EVATECH project. The seminar dealt with basics of radiation protection, principles of intervention in nuclear or radiological emergencies, off-site protective actions in nuclear accidents, decision analysis principles, evaluation tools developed for aiding decision making, and practical guides for facilitating workshops in which protective actions are planned. Seventeen experts from all the seven EVATECH countries attended the seminar. The general conclusion was that, after the seminar, the trained experts are capable to conduct the national workshops to be arranged as a part of the Work Package 4 of EVATECH.

This report describes the set-up and the results of the facilitated workshop organised in Finland April 2004. The workshop considered a hypothetical scenario in which there had been an accidental release of radionuclides from a NPP leading to the contamination of the environment. The theme of the workshop was the choice of possible clean-up actions in inhabited areas a week after the release. The work is part of the EVATECH project (FIS5-2001-00113), which aims to explore the information and decision support needs of key players.

Nine facilitated workshops on selection of strategies to clean-up of contaminated inhabited environments were run in seven European countries within the EVATECH project undertaken as part of the key action Nuclear Fission in the fifth EURATOM Framework Programme (FP5). The Aim of the workshops was to clarify the information and decision support needs of decision makers a few days after a radioactive release from a nuclear accident when considering the choice and implementation of recovery actions in inhabited areas. The workshops were conducted in 2003 and 2004 in UK, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Slovak Republic, Belgium and Finland. The workshops, in which relevant stakeholders together focused on the same problem, were the first attempt, on a European scale, to use decision analysis tools together with RODOS and ARGOS to test their usability and to identify further development needs of the decision support systems. The decision analysing tool used was WEB-HIPRE, which was chosen to be the tool used with RODOS. The workshops demonstrated that difficult trade-offs in relation to the emphasis given to public perception and political acceptability (so called subjective attributes) against more objective criteria, such as radiation health effects and costs, have to be done. It was also demonstrated that this kind of facilitated workshop is useful in later phases of a radiological emergency situation when stakeholders have enough time to make necessary preparations and to seek adequate support from their own organisations. It was also noticed that RODOS together with WEB-HIPRE can be utilised in training and in exercises where what if scenarios can be exercised. From a technical point of view, the workshops clearly showed that improvements are still needed in the RODOS and ARGOS systems and in their capability to produce the necessary data needed in decision analysis. It is recognised that some of the information required to aid the decision making process will not be available from such systems in the event of an accident, e.g. local issues, acceptability of different countermeasure options etc.

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