Photo caption: BAT2 radon measurement station (lat. 43.37, lon. 12.41, altitude 691 m asl (Pietralunga - PG, Umbria), installed in January 2018. It is equipped with a commercial solid-state sensor of the Algade AERC type equipped of battery which, in addition to the radon concentration (Bq/m3), also supplies the relative humidity, with a sampling time of two hours.
IRON (Italian Radon Monitoring Network) represents the first example in Italy, and one of the first ever in the world, of a dense network on a regional scale of permanent stations for (almost) real-time monitoring of radon concentration. Developed and implemented in the last 10 years, it currently includes about 50 stations, most of which are concentrated along the central-southern Apennine chain. The variety and diversity in terms of instruments, type of installation and above all the large number of concentration data acquired (30% of the stations have time series of at least 4-5 years), have made it necessary to implement a relational database which allows, through a dedicated web interface, the visualization of all the time series and the consultation of the characteristics associated with each station/instrument. The objectives of IRON, in addition to the continuous strengthening of the monitoring network itself, are represented by the technological and scientific development of monitoring techniques and numerical analysis protocols. With this in mind, commercial multi-parameter sensors were acquired and installed in 2018 which allow the remote acquisition of data in real time in autonomous mode, guaranteeing greater operating autonomy thanks to extremely low electricity consumption.
Since 2019, following a public tender, an agreement with the site has been activated the weather for the supply of atmospheric data detected on the ground, in an open environment and in the vicinity of the IRON stations, for the filtering of the radon historical series and the improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio. The most recent objective is represented by the integration of IRON within a multi-parameter monitoring network (RSN+RING+IRON+CASSANDRA EM-VLF), which envisages the creation of a network on a national scale, initially made up of at least 10 homogeneous sites in which there are velocimeters, accelerometers, GPS sensors, electromagnetic monitoring devices and radon concentration meters for the characterization of the current dynamics of central Italy.
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