Comparison of different approaches of soil sampling uncertainty determination

Denis Glavič-Cindro; Michel Bruggeman; Boštjan Črnič; Marijan Nečemer; Toni Petrovič; Petra Prem; Branko Vodenik; Benjamin Zorko

doi:10.1016/j.apradiso.2023.110676

Comparison of different approaches of soil sampling uncertainty determination

Appl Radiat Isot. 2023 Apr:194:110676. doi: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2023.110676. Epub 2023 Jan 19.

Authors

Denis Glavič-Cindro¹, Michel Bruggeman², Boštjan Črnič³, Marijan Nečemer³, Toni Petrovič³, Petra Prem³, Branko Vodenik³, Benjamin Zorko³

Affiliations

¹ Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova cesta 39, SI-1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Electronic address: denis.cindro@ijs.si.
² Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, SCK CEN, Boeretang 200, 2400, Mol, Belgium.
³ Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova cesta 39, SI-1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

PMID: 36709607
DOI: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2023.110676

Abstract

The ISO/IEC 17025 standard requires that all significant contributions have to be propagated to the measurement uncertainty, including also sampling uncertainties. We evaluated soil sampling uncertainties for gamma-ray spectrometry by using in-house and split-sample methods. By in-house method, the sampling uncertainty was determined by comparing standard deviations of measurement results and average analytical uncertainty. With split-sample method, it was calculated using between-sample and between-analysis variances. If analytical uncertainty is reliably determined, the in-house method is recommended because fewer measurements are needed.

Keywords: ANOVA; Between-analysis variance; Between-sample variance; Environmental samples; High resolution gamma-ray spectrometry; ISO/IEC 17025:2017; Radioactivity; Radionuclides; Sampling; Sampling uncertainty; Soil samples; Uncertainty; Uncertainty budget.