Institute of Radiation Protection

EPCARD

As an immediate consequence of the ICRP recommendations in 1990, the GSF Institute of Radiation Protection (ISS) had issued research programmes, which aimed at the theoretical and experimental assessment of the natural exposure to ionising radiation in aircrafts. With support from the European Commission and scientists from the University of Siegen, the ISS has developed thh EPCARD-European Program Package for the Calculation of Aviation Route Doses. This code allows calculation of doses from all components of penetrating cosmic radiation on any aviation route and for any flight profile. The officially approved (by the Federal Office for Aviation, LBA, and the National Metrology Institute, PTB) version of the EPCARD program is already in use by several European air companies.

EPCARD portal

The next generation code EPCARD.Net was approved for official use for aircrew dosimetry by the German Aviation Authority (LBA) and the National Metrology Institute, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) on April 23rd, 2010.

In 2009, a workshop was held at the Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig , Germany, on cosmic radiation and aircrew exposure. Contributions were published in a special issue of Radiation Protection Dosimetry.

 
References:

V. Mares, T. Maczka, G. Leuthold and W. Rühm. Air Crew Dosimetry with an new version of EPCARD. Radiation Protection Dosimetry (2009), Vol. 136, No. 4, pp. 262-266.

V. Mares, G. Leuthold. Altitude-dependent dose conversion coefficients in EPCARD. Radiation Protection Dosimetry, Vol. 126, No. 1-4, pp. 581-584, 2007.