ARGOS was originally built for, and has many features for offsite emergency management during all phases of a nuclear disaster. As example ARGOS was heavily used by all member countries during the Fukushima accident in Japan.
On top of the general functionality, ARGOS has the following features for Nuclear incidents.
European Model for Inhabited Areas (ERMIN)
Inhabited areas (cities) contain most of the population in more or less urbanized environments, where more people are exposed to deposited contaminants. Such areas should therefore be calculated in much higher detail. The ERMIN model from [HPA|Partner HPA] is a powerful tool for calculating countermeasure strategies in such areas. Based on the calculations it is possible to assess different countermeasure packages regarding dose saved, cost, worker dose and amount of waste produced.
Agricultural Countermeasure Program (AGRICP)
Rural areas consist primarily of scarcely populated open land that is used for producing foodstuffs and are handled by AGRICP model from [GSF|Partner GSF] to estimates the transfer of radiation in the food chain. The AGRICP model is used on an administrative unit (municipality) scale, and can calculating the effects of applying different countermeasures. FDM can provide a big variety of end-points (e.g. feed and food contamination, doses for different exposure pathways) in different graphical form (e.g. maps, histograms, pie charts or time dependency diagrams).
Interface to models running on super computers
The long-range atmospheric dispersion models are loosely coupled to ARGOS in the way that they can be started remotely at the Met-Office by request directly from ARGOS. The models require a description of the release scenario. This input to a long-range model is automatically uploaded from ARGOS to the Met-Office where the meteorological data are taken from the operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.
Nuclear Monitoring Data from Permanent Stations
This includes data from domestic monitoring systems, but it can be important also to include nuclear monitoring data from foreign countries.
The picture is showing imported nuclear measurements from European stations imported into ARGOS in the Eurdep format.
Carborne Gamma Spectrum Monitoring
Data from the Carborne Gamma Survey (CGS) monitoring systems are well sup-ported in ARGOS as well. The data are treated in the same way as AGS data – just without the height information.
Team / Route Management
As part of radiological/nuclear measurement handling, ARGOS uses the concept of “Measurement Teams” where predefined networks of measurement routes may be stored in the database. The emergency management may decide which routes the mobile teams for measuring fall-out should follow in an emergency.
Airborne Gamma Spectrum Monitoring Data
Data from an Airborne Gamma Survey (AGS) Monitoring system is strongly supported by ARGOS.
Trajectories
ARGOS can display a trajectory output from both long- and short-range models. Trajectories give important information to understand the dispersion.
Preparedness for Nuclear Ships
The ARGOS database contains information for accidents in nuclear ships and submarines. This is relevant if such ships are near the shores or harbors of any country.