Reflections on the European Regional Congress, The Hague, 4-8 June 2018

Roger Coates and Klaus Henrichs

The Congress had over 600 delegates, and eight EC members were in attendance (7 European plus Jong Kim). The Congress theme was Sustainability in Radiation Protection.

A report from the ASF is given as an appendix.

There was a major change in the approach to Refresher Courses. Courses took place on the morning of Monday and Wednesday, with no other scientific proceedings in competition (although the ASF and some site visits did compete). The topics were very substantive, and there was no additional charge for attendance. This meant that courses were very well attended, with an estimated 50% of all delegates present. There is some learning here for future congresses.

In addition to the standard poster displays there were two ‘Poster Pitch’ venues in the conference exhibition area, used during the breaks for 5 minute presentations of offered posters using electronic poster boards. About 40% of poster authors were given this opportunity. A good development, worth future consideration. However, there were no other organised opportunities to focus attention on the posters – eg planned poster sessions.

There was a strong Young Persons programme, with a lunchtime reception (sadly with limited numbers) involving a facilitated discussion/introduction activity. The Young Persons Prize Competition was held as a specific plenary session, with moderate audience attendance. This meant that the presenters were not in their scientific Topic Sessions, and perhaps the questions and discussions were limited by this. There were mixed views on the best approach to the YP prize arrangements – either all together (as here), or within the topic groups. The EC should review the experience and give guidance. Of the 11 entries, 9 were female and 8 of the topics were medical. The competition was won by the French candidate.

Immediately following the prize competition there was the launch of the YGN, managed by the leadership trio from Austria, France and UK. In addition to the launch presentations, contributions were given by France, Austria, UK, Netherlands, Italy, Spain displaying their YP engagement. Overall this prompted enthusiasm and specific offers to join the current leadership group.

Summary congress conclusions were presented in the final session, with the organisers also committed to preparing a more comprehensive feedback/conclusions report for wider publication in due course.

The congress programme was only available via the Congress App through one’s Smart Device (phone or tablet). Many people found this a difficult situation, with wide agreement that there should also have a printed ‘overview programme’ (eg two sides of A4) to allow individual planning for session attendance. The App was actually quite comprehensive, especially for those viewing on tablets or laptops, and was clearly a step in the right direction – but for the current nature of delegates it needed some additional ‘traditional’ support. The challenge was perhaps compounded by the rather limited advance information on the detailed programme content. This was commented on by many delegates, and is an important lesson – even two weeks before the congress there was only a sketchy outline programme available on the website.

Within the programme there were particularly good sessions on public understanding and communication. This included an IRPA AS workshop session reflecting our TG, led by Pete Cole (UK) and Tanja Perko (Belgium). There were many AS represented in the audience of around 60 persons, with good presentations and discussions which I believe really did energise and strongly encourage wider active engagement with the TG’s work. Preliminary conclusions are available separately. This session acted as a ‘precursor input’ into the following week’s RICOMET conference in Antwerp (attended by Hiroko as TG leader plus RC), where the same workshop was organised by the Belgian Society.

One thought linked to this – except for the YGN there were no other sessions directly linked to any key IRPA work streams, such as security of sources etc, although the leader of the HERT Culture TG did arrange an informal meeting of TG members which was quite useful to help give a little more momentum to this task. Something to think about for future congresses – make use of to give more visibility and impetus to our work programme.

There was good visibility of NIR in the programme. In particular the ICNIRP Chairman presented on their programme, including the review on potential alignment with the system of protection for ionising radiation (ICRP/IAEA etc). There are challenges here, but it demonstrated the need for IRPA to engage in this topic at an important and opportune time, and there was a specific invitation for IRPA to engage (which was fully accepted in private discussion!).

There were several papers and discussions on ‘the future of our profession’, involving recruitment and retention programmes, knowledge management, career development etc. This is clearly a topic on very wide interest, and IRPA should perhaps be more active, broadening out from our YGN activities into wider possible roles for the AS.

The IRPA system of protection consultation report was mentioned in several presentations, with perhaps a growing awareness/interest in moving towards a more practical emphasis in RP. There was a well-received intentionally-provocative presentation on NORM and mining, which to a large extent aligned with developing thoughts on conservatism in our profession.

Overall the congress was well appreciated by delegates, and there was much praise for the breadth and depth of the scientific programme.

European ASF, The Hague, 4th June 2018

Bernard Le Guen

Representatives from SRP UK, Austrian society , French society , Nordic society , Belgium Society, Czech society, Dutch society , FS ( German and Swiss) society, Hungarian society , Romanian society, Spanish society, Italian society , Russian society, Ireland society

A special guest: Korean society IRPA

1. System of Protection Consultation: First part remarks from SFRP (Thierry Schneider) on uncertainties, importance to take into account the EC Concert program with a topic on uncertainty , the radiation protection week in Croatia…. The link with others also on risk on communication initiative, OECD (CRPPPH: Milano science and value in October…)

2. IRPA EC Representation

Options for better regional balance:

A. Formal regional structure & constitutional change, with 5 regional structure

B. Rule change simply, ensure sure to have 1 person from 1 region

C. No formal change, but just to encouraged informed voting,

General Assembly voting arrangements : Allow wider use of proxy votes for those Societies that cannot attend?

Clarify the rules, able to give vote by proxy ….

SRP ( Amber Bannon) : international voice of RP option B , use proxy vote, small voice funding. Beware option C – we have tried to do it in Europe for several years, but it failed in Cape Town!

Italian : encouragement act , regional and candidate from small AS (option C) , OK for proxy voting initiative

Austrian society : one member of the twelve must be young ,(option C ), ok for Proxy voting initiative

French society ;: ok for support good balance, no easy to find a good equation, , option C, if responsible attitude , reasonable behavior in Europe …., fully support of more wider used of proxy

FS : too complex to change , option C, more information must be needed , proxy vote

Dutch society: AS must be aware about representation , this is a regional question, option C, OK for proxy

Hungarian : small society have limited resources , representative from small society are very important , between option B and C ??? , why not an observer?

Romania:

o 1.- YES, we should make some changes to accommodate Regional Representation.

o 2.- We prefer option C or B+C.

o 3.- We fully agree that “there is a danger in focusing on one particular representation issue”, but the number of individual IRPA members in the Region is a very important issue, in a list including also : region, profession/field and age/gender.

o If our proposal, see below (4) is accepted, keeping EC seats for Europe between 5 and max. 7 seems to be O.K. for everybody.

o 4.- The increase of EC from 12 to 15 members is expected to offer several other/good/additional options for Regional Representation.

o 5.- No need to change now the Constitution.

o 6.- Keep the actual Voting Procedure. No “proxy votes”, but try to find solutions for a financial support for some AS to attend GA.

Czech: Option C: Accept the current formal position, but place greater emphasis on encouraging the voting delegates to give proper consideration to issues of regional balance." We believe that personal motivation and enthusiasm to work in EC IRPA is more important than regional affiliation. An overall balance (regional affiliation, professional specialization, age, sex) is necessary and should be supported in EC elections, but the strong emphasis should be put mainly to encourage RP experts to be active in RP societies and to present themselves as candidates for EC.

3. Horizon Scanning: listing of items of potential significance:

SFRP: Education and training , multi hazard approach, which way with the work

FS : optimization and justification , loss of competency , question from practitioners.

4. Klaus presentation on NIR

UK : very strong support on IRPA initiative on NIR, public question brain cancer /cell phone, leukemia. IRPA should focus on education and training, and recognition of qualifications

Dutch IRPA members ‘role on the education and training to the public on NIR

Spain : 30% of question to the AS are on NIR question, Message on public perception

FS/ full conference on NIR , same goal on IR and NIR

Italy : share opinion communication ,

Sig : similarity yes but also diiference WHO/ICNIRP conference : need also of system of protection on NIR

It seems very clear that there is a need for IRPA for sharing information expertise

5. YGN

Request for more members of the leadership group. Proposal for the EC to allocate a budget, and for appointment of YGN Chair (Sylvain - France) and Secretary (Akiro – Japan).

6. European Congress 2022

3 bids presented – Malaga (Spain), Vienna (Austria), Budapest (Hungary). After some discussion Austria withdrew their bid.

There was considerable discussion on the mechanism for making the decision. It was agreed (by majority vote) that each AS, including those not present, would communicate their vote to the European coordinator (Renate) by midnight Thursday, so that the decision could be announced at the closing ceremony. The voting outcome was 12 for Budapest, 9 for Malaga, so 2022 will be in Hungary.

There was general agreement that the European Presidents meeting should agree a formal arrangement for making such decisions. There was a strong suggestion for working on an eight year decision timeframe as for International Congresses, and also for considering regional rotation within Europe.

7. Issues from the AS

The big workload of the SEPR in collecting comments of our associates and Latin-American colleagues for the transposition of the new European directive to our national legal framework.

FS: Developing a discussion paper on basic principles of RP – doses & limits, practical issues including conservatism, emergency issues, public communication (including issues of ‘self-appointed experts’).

SRP: Noted UK SRP development to engage with a wider cross section of the profession – ie not just ‘graduate experts’, but also technical staff etc. Should IRPA be doing more here? FS noted that their journal covers a wide range within the profession.