Research is often limited by the availability of real data, which means that methodologies for simulations have to be developed and simulations have to be run as close to reality as possible. This is the case, for example, when studying 5G exposure and its potential health effects.
For this reason, the newborn OUTREACH initiative (OUTdoor Realistic Exposure Assessment for next-generation Cellular networks on Humans) has set out to involve industry, asking private and governmental actors to provide real data in order to carry out scientific studies.
Robin Wydaeghe presenting the OUTREACH initiative at the Bioem 2024 conference.
OUTREACH is the brainchild of Robin Wydaeghe, PhD student at Ghent University and researcher on the GOLIAT project. The initiative was presented during the BioEM 2024 conference, where it was supported by experts involved in various research projects.
“The OUTREACH initiative is aimed at persuading companies to share their (proprietary) data with academic groups, in order to perform more realistic simulations of 5G exposure assessment. For example, the real antenna pattern of a 5G base station is crucial to compute how much fields impinge on a human, and so is an accurate 3D smartphone model to assess the SAR in humans”, says Robin Wydaeghe. “Unfortunately, academics have very limited access to this data, meaning we are forced to use worst-case proxies and assumptions”, he adds.
The OUTREACH initiative has gathered support from experts in the EMF exposure community and is now initiating conversations with the main actors in industry.
More information on the initiative can be found on https://www.outreachinitiative.info/
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