European COmmon FRAMEwork for Operational Scientific Data in RWM - ECOFRAME

Objective

ECOFRAME aims to define a common European reference approach for the traceable lifecycle management of safety-relevant and design-relevant operational scientific data in radioactive waste management, focusing on how such data are generated, curated, interpreted, preserved and used to support repository design, safety assessment and safety-case decisions.
 

Description of the WP 

Radioactive waste management programmes increasingly rely on large and heterogeneous datasets generated during site characterisation, monitoring, laboratory investigations, modelling, facility design and safety assessment activities. These datasets are produced and interpreted over many decades, often by multiple organisations and generations of experts.

While significant effort is devoted to generating scientific data, less attention has been given to ensuring that future users can understand how data were generated, processed, interpreted and ultimately used to support safety-related decisions. This creates risks for transparency, reproducibility, knowledge transfer and regulatory confidence.

Existing EURAD-2 Knowledge Management activities and international initiatives, such as OECD/NEA WP-IDKM, provide useful foundations. However, there is still no common European approach for showing how safety-relevant and design-relevant scientific data are produced, checked, interpreted, preserved and used in radioactive waste management decisions. ECOFRAME will address this gap by developing a shared reference approach for operational scientific data management that can be used by WMOs, TSOs and regulators in different national programmes.

The WP will be driven by the needs of WMOs (organisations responsible for repository implementation and safety-case development) and organisations performing regulatory interactions (TSOs, including bodies like WENRA/ENSREG). End-user group requirements will be used to prioritise the operational scientific datasets, traceability requirements, and governance approaches considered throughout the WP. Special emphasis will be given to inviting WMOs and regulators to the end-user group and maintaining regular exchanges on their needs
 

Outcomes

•    Establish a common European understanding of the requirements for traceable lifecycle management of safety-relevant and design-relevant operational scientific data, enabling more consistent, transparent and efficient use of data across radioactive waste management programmes and supporting optimisation of data-related practices. (Innovation for Optimisation & Knowledge Management)
•    Identify and evaluate practical approaches for documenting data provenance, metadata, assumptions, uncertainties and interpretation pathways, providing recommendations that improve the long-term usability, quality assurance, reproducibility and future reassessment of operational scientific data used in repository design, safety assessment and safety-case development. (Innovation for Optimisation & Knowledge Management)
•    Demonstrate through representative case studies how operational scientific data, models and expert judgement contribute to safety-relevant decisions, identifying potential sources of information loss, bias and reduced traceability, and proposing measures to improve the robustness and transparency of decision-making processes. (Innovation for Optimisation & Societal Engagement)
•    Identify governance and stakeholder requirements for operational scientific data traceability, helping to strengthen transparency, accountability and stakeholder confidence in the use of scientific evidence for radioactive waste management decisions while supporting meaningful engagement of relevant actors throughout programme lifecycles. (Societal Engagement)
•    Provide recommendations and supporting materials that support the long-term preservation, transfer and reuse of operational scientific data and associated decision rationales across generations of experts and different national programme contexts, contributing to greater convergence of practices within the European radioactive waste management community. (Knowledge Management)