UncertRadio

(german version)

Software for determining characteristic limits in accordance to ISO 11929 for radioactivity measurements

The software UncertRadio enables the automated calculation of characteristic threshold values of activity mesurements according to ISO 11929. These include the activity concentration or specific activity and its combined standard measurement uncertainty, an uncertainty budget and values of decision threshold and the detection limit. The uncertainties of the single output values are calculated using numerical error propagation according to ISO GUM.

UncertRadio can be used for a variety of applications from Alpha, Beta and Gamma measurements, but also from dosimetry. It has the capability to derive the characteristic values for up to three radionuclides simultaneously, whose output quantity values, e.g. activity values, of which are dependent from each other due to the measurement. Therefore, it is especially suited for modern liquid scintillation measurement procedures of e.g. Strontium isotopes.

There are two main analytical approaches used within the software differing by the equations for the evaluation:

• procedures without linear unfolding: the basic evaluation model is linear in the net count rate; numerically applied propagation of uncertainty values of input quantities (Kanisch, 2016a),

• procedures with linear unfolding: the model in addition includes linear least squares procedures for fitting e.g. for decay or build-up curves (Kanisch, 2016b).

Alternatively, an evaluation by Monte Carlo simulation may be used within both approaches. This represents the method of propagating whole distributions and is in advantage in the case of significant deviations from the normal distribution; see ISO GUM Supplements 1 and 2.

Applying UncertRadio means that the user should be able to formulate the equations used for the calculating values of the output quantity. A special advantage is, however, that no partial derivatives are to be supplied. For a better understanding of the course of the software and of user-supplied equations and functions an extensive bundle of application examples as project files is included into the installation.

Many of the application examples are from the working group "AK-SIGMA" of the "German-Suisse Association for Radiation Protection", from Measuring Instructions of the German Co-ordinating Offices and from the literature. These examples including those of a German National Supplement 1 of DIN ISO 11929 (2014) as well as the examples from the more recent standard ISO 11929-4 contributed to the validation of UncertRadio.

The author is grateful for the feedback and new requirements of the user-community, especially from federal coordination centres and the laboratiories of the German Federal States working after AVV-IMIS on monitoring of environmental radioavitiy, and significantly improved the quality and usability of UncertRadio.

The actual version is 2.5.1.

Since version 2.5.1, the source code is available online and UncertRadio can be created from the sources. The associated installation guide is given below. Pre-compiled packages are still provided for Windows. These consist of a packed archive containing all required files. After unpacking, the program can be started with the "UncertRatio.exe" found within the "bin/" subdirectory.

Version 2.4.32 is the last version that can be installed with an installation program for Windows.

From version 2.1.4 (2017) to 2.4.32 the download consisted of one executable file, which combines all required components of teh Software (help-files, short installation guide, collection of validated example projects). Additionally, a brief instruction to use the software was provided for download. The private or commercial use of the software is free of charge.

Since version 1.08 (2013) UncertRadio can be used as an interface between the software for acquiring measurement data and the transfer of characteristic values into a modern laboratory information system. The csv format is used for data import and export.

The program's author is Günter Kanisch. Contact person for questions and suggestions is Dr. Marc-Oliver Aust from the "Federal co-ordinating Office for fish and fishery products, crustaceans, mollusks and marine algae" in the Thünen-Institute of Fisheries Ecology.

Important Note:

UncertRadio is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

UncertRadio is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with UncertRadio. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

The software was developed by the author following state-of-the-art of science, standardization and technology and validated with respect to the correct mathematical treatment of the model input equations of the evaluation model. Nevertheless, no warranty is given for the correctness of results obtained by the user working with UncertRadio, neither by the author nor by TI and BMUV, and no responsibility is taken for emerging demands by any third party.

How to cite

If you are using UncertRadio, please consider citing the following papers:

KANISCH, G.; OBER, F.; Aust, M.O.: **UncertRadio**: Software for determining characteristic
threshold values in accordance to ISO 11929 for environmental radioactivity measurements
Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS), in preparation
https://doi.org/10.xxxxxx/draft

KANISCH, G.: Generalized evaluation of environmental radioactivity measurements with UncertRadio. Part I: Methods without linear unfolding.
Appl. Radiat. Isot. 110, 2016, 28–41
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apradiso.2015.12.003

KANISCH, G.: Generalized evaluation of environmental radioactivity measurements with UncertRadio. Part II: Methods with linear unfolding.
Appl. Radiat. Isot. 110, 2016, 74–86
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apradiso.2015.12.046

How to build UncertRadio

Requirements for Windows

Download and install MSYS2 at https://www.msys2.org/

Start the MSYS2 MINGW64 environment and update the system

pacman -Syuu

Restart the MSYS2 MINGW64 terminal if required

Install required tools and programms

pacman -S git mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc-fortran mingw-w64-x86_64-gtk3 mingw-w64-x86_64-plplot mingw-w64-x86_64-wxwidgets3.2-msw

Requirements for Linux

Please make sure you have installed the following tools including the development files:

• git
• cmake
• gcc-fortran (and corresponding gcc-toolchain)
• gtk3
• plplot (fortran bindings are installed by UncertRadio)

Most of these tools are available via the package manager of common Linux distributions.

We were able to successfully compile UncertRadio using the following distributions:

• Arch linux
• Debian 12 (build-essentials, gfortran, git, libgtk-3-dev, libplplot-dev)
• Fedora 39

Actually build UncertRadio

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/OpenBfS/UncertRadio.git

Now it should be possible to build UncertRadio.

cd UncertRadio
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build

Install UncertRadio. The directory can be changed using the --prefix option:

cmake --install build --prefix=UR2_5

Create an archive to distribute UncertRadio (mainly intended for Windows):

tar -czvf UR2_5.tar.gz UR2_5

Update

To get the latest version just update the main branch

git checkout main
git pull

Now restart the build and install process (see above).

Start and running the included tests

After running the install command, UncertRadio can be started by running the executable in the created bin directory:

./UR2_5/bin/UncertRadio.exe

There are about 70 examples in German and English language included in the pros directory. To check if UncertRadio is running correctly, you can start its included testsuite by selecting "Options/QC batch test". By default it opens all the included projects and compares its results. Any deviations that may occur are reported.

In addition, all projects can be individually accessed through the 'Open Project' dialog. For most of the projects, the expected results are included in the description tab.

To be done

• carefully correct all (old) Licence informations

  • add the licenses of the included libraries
  • add a license for UR2

• translate the README to english

• add linux compilation instructions

• add a JOSS Paper draft (see paper branch)

• check all included examples

• create automatic tests

• create a sphinx documentation and migrate the (Windows-chm) help files (see sphinx branch)

• create an automatic building and upload system for Windows binaries

• update the function parser to a potentially faster version

• refactor the logging system (there are still unopened files)

• provide linux binaries (as AppImage or Flatpak?)

• refactor and simplify the complete translation (gettext? not available for fortran)

• separate GUI and backend

Known issues

You tell us ;) -> please use the issue tab or create a pull request. We are grateful for every help. Please get involved.