Awards

Kimiaki Saito, commission at the Center for Computer Science and e-System, received the “Best Paper Award in FY2023”, which was presented in the award ceremony held on June 26, 2024 on line. The candidates of the Award were selected as papers with high academic values by the Editorial Board of the Society among the papers published in the Japanese Journal of Health Physics and the Journal of Radiation Protection and Research, and the final decision was made by the Selection Committee. The awarded paper is “Temporal Change in Radiological Environments on Land after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident”

After the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, massive environmental data in the Fukushima region have been accumulated by the large-scale environmental investigation continuously carried out in collaboration with many people. This review article summarizes the specific features of radiological conditions on land in the Fukushima region. 　

First, the paper outlines the initial contamination conditions in the Fukushima region; then, it reports the features on the temporal change in radiation levels including their land-use dependency and human activity dependency together with the related radiocesium migration properties in the environment. Also, the paper describes the development of the prediction model based on statistical analysis of big car-borne survey data. Furthermore, the article introduces the method for constructing the integrated map by merging different environmental monitoring datasets using a Bayesian geostatistic approach, various activities and basic information on external exposure dose measurements and evaluation, and the necessity for the storage and dissemination of accumulated fuse knowledge and data as well as the necessity for the preservation and utilization of collected many environmental samples.

The review paper is expected to keep providing useful information for a wide spectrum of readers for a long time, since it summarizes the information on the radiological environments in the Fukushima region comprehensively. The paper is understood as the fruit of the whole activities by those engaged in environmental measurements after the Fukushima accident.

【Awarded title】
“Best Paper Award in FY2023” of the Japan Health Physics Society

【Awarded work】
“Temporal Change in Radiological Environments on Land after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident”

【Award recipient】
*Kimiaki Saito, Satoshi Mikami, Sakae Kinase, Tetsuro Sato, Yukihisa Sanada

【Reference】
Website: https://www.jrpr.org/journal/view.php?doi=10.14407/jrpr.2019.44.4.128

*The authors of the paper are as follows: K. Saito, S. Mikami, M. Andoh, N. Matsuda, S. Kinase, S. Tsuda, S. Sato, A. Seki, Y. Sanada, H. Wainwright-Murakami, K. Yoshimura, H. Takemiya, J. Takahashi, H. Kato, Y. Onda