The European project ORION launches with the aim of reducing the uncertainties in the data used by authorities during radiological and nuclear emergencies, so that protective measures are based on reliable and traceable information.
The consortium, coordinated by the Finnish radiation protection authority STUK, held its kick-off meeting from 1 to 3 July 2026 in Helsinki, with the participation of all 20 entities in the project.
Ibercivis attended the first consortium meeting last month, which served to present the structure and objectives of ORION, align the teams from each work package on their role and timeline, and lay the groundwork for the project’s management plan over the next 36 months. The meeting also addressed the composition of the future Stakeholder Committee, which will bring together regulatory bodies, instrument manufacturers and other organisations outside the consortium to gather their input throughout the project.
During a radiological or nuclear emergency, authorities must decide quickly which protective measures to adopt, and these decisions depend on measurement data that often carry a degree of uncertainty that is difficult to quantify. The ORION project tackles this challenge on several fronts: it analyses and improves environmental monitoring strategies across different countries, develops faster laboratory methods to ensure the safety of food and water, studies the impact of the new quantities for radiation exposure proposed by the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU), and sets out recommendations on the use of measurements taken by citizens and drones.
The project brings together 20 organisations from 13 European countries, including national metrology institutes, radiation protection authorities and research organisations. The consortium includes STUK (Finland), project coordinator and responsible for the national early-warning network; CLOR (Poland), which leads the work package on environmental monitoring; MIUN (Sweden), leading the improvement of laboratory methods; VINS (Serbia), coordinating the analysis of the impact of the new exposure quantities; ASNR (France), responsible for the work package on citizen and drone measurements; and IPQ (Portugal), in charge of the project’s dissemination and impact activities. The consortium is completed by other authorities and research centres from Germany, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Belgium, Austria, Lithuania, Ukraine and Spain.
Ibercivis takes part as an external partner in the consortium, contributing the expertise gained on environmental radiation through the Openred project. Its work focuses on analysing how to reliably integrate citizen-generated data into decision-making during radiological emergencies: from reviewing European citizen science initiatives in this field, to identifying the main sources of uncertainty in citizen measurements and proposing methods to reduce them. Ibercivis takes part in the work packages dedicated to citizen and drone measurements, project dissemination, and project management.