Recommended citation
ICRP, 2018. Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on the System of Radiological Protection. Ann. ICRP 47(3/4).

From the Editorial - We have now held four international symposia on the system of radiological protection: in the USA in 2011, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2013, in Korea in 2015, and, most recently, in France in October 2017, hosted by the Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire (IRSN).

Each symposium has been organised learning from those that came before. All have been designed to be both international in nature and relevant to the local and regional segment of the audience. The Fourth International Symposium on the System of Radiological Protection was the first to be held in conjunction with another major international event: the Second European Radiological Protection Research Week (ERPW). As such, we collaborated closely with the five European research platforms: ALLIANCE, EURADOS, EURAMED, MELODI, and NERIS. ICRP-ERPW 2017 attracted more than 500 participants from 42 countries.

The ICRP 2017 programme consisted of five topical sessions on key issues in radiological protection: advances in dose coefficients (with EURADOS); effects, risks, and detriment at low dose and low dose rate (with MELODI); advanced radiotherapy
(with EURAMED); postaccident recovery (with NERIS); and integrated protection of people and the environment (with ALLIANCE).

Within the Second ERPW, each of these platforms also held parallel sessions focusing on their own work. It made for a very rich 3-day programme.

ICRP 2017 continued the tradition, began in 2015, to release presentation materials through the ICRP website within hours of being presented. Videos of all presentations were also released during the weeks following the event. These, along with all ICRP 2017 abstracts, lists of attendees and supporters, and summaries of the ICRP Main Commission and committee meetings held in conjunction with the symposium, are available at www.icrp.org (select ‘ICRP symposia’ from the main menu).

These proceedings include full papers for almost all presentations. In the few cases where a paper is not available, the abstract is included. These are the work of the individual authors. They are not recommendations of ICRP and do not necessarily represent the views of ICRP. However, together with the material available online, they are a lasting record of the meeting, and give those who could not attend in person a good sense of what was discussed. Also included is a paper by Larry Dauer, not related to a specific presentation, to complement the rest of the material on radiotherapy.