A Multiscale Bayesian data integration approach for mapping air dose rates around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant

Wainwright, H. M.*; Seki, Akiyuki   ; Chen, J.*; Saito, Kimiaki  

This paper presents a multiscale data integration method to estimate the spatial distribution of air dose rates in the regional scale around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. We demonstrate our approach using three types of datasets collected at the same time over Fukushima City in Japan: (1) coarse-resolution airborne surveys covering the entire area, (2) car surveys along major roads, and (3) walk surveys in multiple neighborhoods. Results show that the method can successfully integrate three types of datasets and create an integrated map (including the confidence intervals) of air dose rates over the domain in high resolution. Moreover, this study provides us with various insights into the characteristics of each data set, as well as radiocaesium distribution. In particular, the urban areas show high heterogeneity in the contaminant distribution due to human activities as well as large discrepancy among different surveys due to such heterogeneity.