During March and April of 1973, FIDLER surveys, location staking, and the
collection of hundreds of samples in Area 5 (GMX) was accomplished.
This surge of activity caused new areas of liaison to be required.
Coordination
was needed between the personnel who were developing new techniques for preparing soil and vegetation samples for analysis and the NAEG investigators respon-
sible for the ongoing studies. Methods for instrumental and chemical analysis
of the new sample matrix had to be developed. This expanded the scope of the
In addition to interelating the ongoing work of the
coordination effort.
statistician, engineers, radiological monitor teams, sample preparation personnel, and evaluation personnel, the radiochemists were introduced into the
ecological study effort and liaison was again expanded to include their activities.
By the end of 1973, hundreds of Tonopah Test Range samples had been collected,
prepared for analysis, and shipped to radiochemical laboratories.
There were,
by that time, thousands of samples from Area 5 and the Tonopah Test Range NAEG
intensive study areas, in various stages of collection, preparation, and
radiochemical analysis.
Also, cattle grazing and soil resuspension studies
were under way.
The advent of these activities produced an avalanche of sample information and
analytical data.
The manual methods being used to handle this increased data
volume were inadequate.
Either the data control and evaluation staff would
have to be increased to the size of a small army with green eyeshades and
quill pens, or the manual NAEG data base would need to be converted to a
computerized data base.
Before data could be handled by a computer system, it
had to be organized.
Therefore, meetings were held to discuss the problems
involved.
It was discovered that eight different methods had been used for
selecting sample locations in the field.
Different analytical methods were
being used by the analytical laboratories.
Arguments had long since developed
concerning the most accurate formulas for calculating error terms for analytical
result units. No agreement had been reached on which result units should be
used throughout the NAEG system.
As a result, in February of 1974, a meeting
of all NAEG persons involved with these problems was held in Los Alamos, New
Mexico, to discuss procedures being used and attempt to determine standard
methods, especially concerning radiochemical techniques and resulting data.
The need for a central, computerized data bank became obvious.
By June of
1974, initial groundwork had been laid for establishing a computerized NAEG/
REECo data base.
This resulted in the need for additional coordination efforts.
REECo volunteered to take on the challenge of developing a computerized system
capable of satisfying the myriad of ideas and requests inherent in the research
effort.
Coordination was employed in bringing together the investigators and
their problems with the computer and data evaluation personnel, who hopefully
had some answers.
The data handling philosophy, at that time, was to try to
anticipate the needs of each investigative study.
As a result, meetings were
held with investigators and data processing personnel to attempt to define the
categories of data expected to result from each study.
This approach did not
bear much fruit; however, it did produce valuable information which was used
in developing general data processing plans.
A new philosophy for processing
NAEG data developed.
The new philosophy required that input data to the NAEG
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