Identification of sources with abnormal radon exhalation rates based on radon concentrations in underground environments

Abstract

When there is poor ventilation or an irregular radon exhalation rate in an underground environment, it is necessary to judge whether the radon concentration is abnormal. To protect personal safety and health from radon gas, it is necessary to track the location of an abnormal radon source and measure its release rate to formulate emergency control and eradication measures. However, in an underground environment, it is impossible to fully monitor the radon concentration at every location, and as a result, blind spots are present, making it difficult to obtain timely early warnings in the event of an abnormal radon exhalation rate. Based on the distribution of radon concentration in an underground environment, this research establishes a theoretical mathematical model of an underground ventilation network containing radon. We combined particle swarm optimization with the long short-term memory (PSO-LSTM) method, which uses part of a time series signal of monitored radon concentrations to track the location of an abnormal radon source and determine an abnormal radon exhalation rate. Performing experiments of theoretical examples and actual underground ventilation environment examples, we prove the necessity of optimizing the monitoring position of the angle-connected ventilation network. The results show that the PSO-LSTM model based on radon concentration monitoring can process time series signals. Its accuracy and decision coefficient greater that is than 0.9 indicate the reliability of the model and method.