Abstract
Radon is a noble gas coming from the natural decay of uranium. It can migrate from the underlying soil into buildings, where sometimes very high concentration can be found, particularly in the basement or at ground floor. It contributes up to about the 50% of the ionizing radiation dose received by the population, constituting a real health hazard. In this study, we use the geographically weighted regression (GWR) technique to detect spatial non-stationarity of the relationship between indoor radon concentration and the radioactivity content of soil in the Provincia of L’Aquila, in the Abruzzo region (Central Italy). Radon measurements have been taken in a sample of 481 dwellings. Local estimates are obtained and discussed. The significance of the spatial variability in the local parameter estimates is examined by performing a Monte Carlo test.
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Notes
- 1.
214Bi and 208Tl belong to the short lived progeny of 222Rn (radon itself, coming from 238U) and 220Rn (the isotope coming from 232Th), respectively. It should be noted that the eU and eTh data do not imply that uranium and thorium are actually present in soil samples, since these elements can be leached away while radium remains in situ, causing a breakdown of secular equilibrium assumption.
- 2.
The semivariograms γ(d) have been modelled by means of isotropic exponential functions as:\(\gamma (d) = {\tau }^{2} + {\sigma }^{2}(1 -\exp (-d/R))\) where d is the modulus of Euclidean distance between pairs of data points, calculated from the geographical coordinates of each dwellings, and τ2, σ2 and R are parameters known as, respectively, nugget, partial sill and range (Olea 1999).
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Nissi, E., Sarra, A., Palermi, S. (2012). Radon Level in Dwellings and Uranium Content in Soil in the Abruzzo Region: A Preliminary Investigation by Geographically Weighted Regression. In: Di Ciaccio, A., Coli, M., Angulo Ibanez, J. (eds) Advanced Statistical Methods for the Analysis of Large Data-Sets. Studies in Theoretical and Applied Statistics(). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21037-2_24
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