Emergencies are by their very nature characterised by urgency. During a nuclear or radiological emergency (NRE), radiation protection professionals may need to perform quick radiation dose estimations in order to inform medical management of affected individuals.
Methods and step-by-step algorithms for emergency dose estimation have been published and relevant sources are provided (see references in https://tberris.com/emergency-radiation-dose-assessment-app). It is clear however, that even the implementation of simple algorithms, can be challenging in stressful emergency situations. In stress, the mere task of looking up the proper coefficients for dose calculations increases the probability for error. Access to needed information may also be hampered in case of emergency.
The Emergency Radiation Dose Assessment App (EmRadDose) aims to streamline the steps of typical dose calculations, needed to guide medical management of affected people, in case of NRE. EmRadDose was created as a stand-alone, off-line tool that may be installed on any Android device (most widely available mobile operating system). It includes information and detailed in-app guidance, needed for quick dose calculations. At the same time, the algorithm steps are clearly organised in order to reduce the probability of calculation errors. At the moment the app provides calculators for the following calculations:
- Effective dose due to external irradiation (point source)
- Committed effective dose due to inhalation of radionuclides
- Committed effective dose due to radionuclide contaminated
wounds
EmRadDose is an open source tool and it is provided free of charge under the GNU General Public License v3.0.
EmRadDose is available for free download
EmRadDose was created with MIT appinventor and the source code is just a file (file extension: .aia) that can be imported to app inventor and opened as a fully editable project.
More information about EmRadDose can be found at: https://tberris.com/emergency-radiation-dose-assessment-app