Report on “Radiation Disaster Recovery Studies”
Course: Radioactivity of Environmental Protection
Name: WIM IKBAL NURSAL○Regarding“Radiation Disaster Recovery Studies”（Describe your thoughts, the process you engaged in and your research progress regarding Recovery from
Radiation Disaster.）

Recovery can be seen as a natural event as a manifestation of a resilience property
of a social-ecological system.

A social-ecological system needs to cope with and recoverfrom an environmental shock (catastrophe) or it will extinct or transform into acomplete different system (form and/or identity).

In the post-disaster phase, science isneeded to understand the scale and extent of disaster impact, which is important toformulate an effective measure and recovery plan.

A science-based policy is widely

recognized as an important key for recovery in a modern society.

In theimplementation, the authority may require a variety of scientists and professionals(expert) to formulate a comprehensive recovery strategy and plan and action.

This iswhat we have seen for years since the accident of Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power
Plant took place, a policy resulted from a top down approach.

It is a response based on

deficit-based model which too much pay attention to the loss and shortcomings and theresulted recommendation of reconstruction usually be imposed to the disaster-affectedstakeholders (Weinstein and Tidball, 2007).
The alternative approach or a more bottom-up approach requires the involvementof public or citizen in science for disaster response.

The pursuit of knowledge in which

the citizen is involved or give their contribution voluntarily, partly or entirely toscientific activities is called citizen science.

Tidball and Krasny (2011) argued thatcitizen science can provide a more contextual or grounded recovery strategy and action
for the affected community. A specific example of this approach is what has been claimed
through ETHOS project, a rehabilitation project that used participatory approach by
involving multiple stakeholders in the routine management of radiological situation(Lochard, 2004).

Recently, the project has been replicated in some affected community

in Fukushima as well.
Citizen participation is not limited to a very small and local communities.

Withthe advanced of information and communication technology, the window for public toparticipate in science is wide opened.

Recently, many enterprises including science

enterprise are benefitted from a huge contribution from volunteers without borders
which then be called “crowd science” or crowdsourcing in science (or it could becomprehended as crowdsourcing in data collection, interpretation and so forth).

One ofthe obvious implication of utilizing a great number of data collectors is the huge amountof collected data which raise concerned to the data accuracy assessment and reliabilityof the data.
The crowdsourcing on radiation data in Japan emerged after the accident led by acivil society organization based in Tokyo, Japan.
world is kept coming up to now.

A lot of participation from all over theIt has a lot of radiation datasets not exclusively fromJapan but the assessment of reliability of the data has not yet been done despite thebenefit that it might have like the other citizen science project (citizen participation)
had.

In my research, the assessment was done to the radiation data that collected

within Fukushima Prefecture only.

The result of my research is expected to give more

information about the crowdsourced data as well as some feedbacks to improve theinitiative.
○Title of Doctoral Thesis

The Assessment of the Crowdsourced Radiation Data to Provide Radiological
Information in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan○Summary of Doctoral Thesis（Describe so as to be easily understood, by relating it to“Radiation Disaster Recovery Studies”.）

Despite of large measurements data have been collected by citizen science, it seems
that very little recognition from the expert/scientist group has been given to the workthat they have done. My study is an attempt to assess the quality of crowdsourced
radiation data in Fukushima by examining the agreement of the data with the expert
group data and the possibility to extend measurement on the complex landscape such as
forests.
What we found from this study is that the citizen science data have a wellagreement with expert group data, although the discrepancy between both data source
are exist (the value of air dose rate, or a radiation quantity which is related with thepotential danger to human health, of crowdsourced data are generally lower than theexpert group data).

Crowdsourced data can be used to evaluate the air dose rate

reduction as it showed the similar pattern of air dose rate reduction with the expert
group data from time to time.
Crowdsourced radiation data were collected by layperson on the ground, so themeasurements tends to be done on accessible place such as road side and seldom on
difficult to access landscape object such as forests. In this study, we investigate
whether extending the target of measurements on the forest using the citizen-science
designed detector and UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) will be possible to provide
reliable radiation information as well. Our study shows that the visual pattern of air
dose rate measured on the UAV did not show a similar pattern to air dose rate measured
on the ground. There was no significant correlation between air dose rate measured on
the ground and on the UAV. We suspected that it was probably due to the low
sensitivity of the citizen science detector in providing a stable radiation measurement
within the high speed of UAV as platform and the distance to radioactivity source on theground (forest floor).
From this study, we learned that citizen science group data with crowdsourcing
approach could potentially be alternative source of radiation information. Despite ofits limitation in measuring radiation in difficult landscape, given the fact that thecitizen science group respond to the Fukushima nuclear crisis earlier than the expert
group in collecting radiation data, we emphasized that this group have a great potential
as a partner for government or expert group to provide radiation information.

○Other theses published in academic research journals
・Title of published article

Potential of Crowdsourcing Approach on Monitoring Radioactivity in Fukushima
Prefecture
・Joint authors

Toshinori Okuda, Toshihiro Yamada