European questionnaire on the use of computer programmes in radiation dosimetry

Because of a potential reduction of necessary experimental efforts, the combination of measurements and supplementing calculations, also in the field of radiation dosimetry, may allow time and money to be saved if computational methods are used which are well suited to reproduce experimental data in a satisfactory quality. The dramatic increase in computing power in recent years now permits the use of computational tools for dosimetry also in routine applications. Many institutions dealing with radiation protection, however, have small groups which, in addition to their routine work, often cannot afford to specialise in the field of computational dosimetry. This means that not only experts but increasingly also casual users employ complicated computational tools such as general-purpose transport codes. This massive use of computer programmes in radiation protection and dosimetry applications motivated the Concerted Action Investigation and Quality Assurance of Numerical Methods in Radiation Protection Dosimetry of the 4th framework programme of the European Commission to prepare, distribute and evaluate a questionnaire on the use of such codes. A significant number of scientists from nearly all the countries of the European Community (and some countries outside Europe) contributed to the questionnaire, that allowed to obtain a satisfactory overview of the state of the art in this field. The results obtained from the questionnaire and summarised in the present Report are felt to be indicative of the situation of using sophisticated computer codes within the European Community although the group of participating scientist may not be a representative sample in a strict statistical sense