Reward project: Real time wide area radiation surveillance system

REWARD is a novel mobile system for real-time, wide-area radiation surveillance. It is based on the integration of new miniaturized solid-state radiation sensors: a CdZnTe detector for gamma radiation and a high efficiency neutron detector based on novel silicon technologies. The sensing unit will include a wireless communication interface to send the data remotely to a monitoring base station as well as a GPS system to calculate the position of the tag. The system will also incorporate middleware and high-level software to provide web-service interfaces for the exchange of information and an expert system to continuously analyse the information from the radiation sensor and correlate it with historical data in order to generate an alarm when an abnormal situation is detected. REWARD will be useful for many different scenarios such as nuclear terrorism threats, lost radioactive sources, radioactive contamination or nuclear accidents. It can be deployed in emergency units and in general in any type of mobile or static equipment, but also inside public/private buildings or infrastructures. The sensing units will be highly portable thanks to their low size and low energy consumption. The complete system will be scalable in terms of complexity and cost and will offer very high precision on both the measurement and the location of the radiation. REWARD's goals will be realized by the collaborative effort of eight highly specialized partners, though synergistic research organizations, wireless sensor networks providers, software developers and application users. The modularity and flexibility of the system will allow for a realistic introduction to the market. Authorities may start with a basic, low cost system and increase the complexity based on their evolving needs and budget constraints.