Planetary Defense Conference Exercise - 2017

The 2017 PDC Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Scenario, Day 4: June 15, 2023

• Press Release
• Press Briefing Charts

Exercise Feedback

• Announce possibilities of fact beforehand
  • For example, provide hard numbers for probability of success
  • How can you possibility reliability numbers for something that haven’t been tested?
• Consider scenario so that disaster management people have something to do
  • Planning team did consider that but wanted the scenario to “win”
  • Find a way engage disaster management in different ways
  • Wanted to provide a way for decision makers to win
• Have non-technical people as playing the “Leaders” role. Felt the leaders were biased to using NED
• Maybe do the scenario backwards
• The world market and economics was a new element to this scenario
  • We should have economists involved in this type of scenario
• Invited talks by economists
  • Or even lawyers, policy makers, etc…
  • Don’t agree to invite non-technical because this is a technical conference. They would change the nature of this conference. They would be appropriate for another conference.
• We discussed whether to deflect east or west, and the economic implications are there but unknown to us now
• We haven’t considered the value of a small flyby to reduce the uncertainty for economic benefit
• Maybe seek input from legal team that advises SMPAG
• Need to capture the recovery aspect after deflection or impact
• We need to change nature of exercise in the future because we’ll be able to detect smaller and smaller asteroids. Then, the problem is to avoid impact of something 100 years out or small asteroid impacts.
• Recommend to explore the post-impact consequences
• Recommend to grow planning team to help Paul
• Improve the public participation aspect, add a poll? It would be interesting to know how the public vote
• If the groups are too large, split them up into sub-groups so that discussions can happen
• The discussion of the nuclear option brought forward the discussion points
• Maybe reorganize the way how decisions are made
• Need to make the roles more explicit and explanation
  • The “Decision to Act” group struggled to find its place
  • It was good to see the groups converged into what is now existing (i.e., IAWN, SMPAG)
  • The explanation of IAWN and SMPAG not good enough for this group to grasp its rolls
• Economists are accustomed to this (PDC-like) risk analysis all the time
• It is important to stress that this exercise is chosen to be complex with many options and long time before impact
• This conference was different in that it was ad hoc, and it evolved over the course of the conference
  • It made it exciting and interesting
  • However, was frustrated that a lot of the information that was generated was not used
• As future detection systems come online, we have a different problem in our hands. Maybe we may have multiple Apophis type asteroids
• Take a page from “Defense”
  • The military will not allow themselves to use untested weapons
  • As a community, we need to advocate to test our techniques
• For 1% probability, it appeared the leadership seemed apt to use resources
  • Maybe we start with 2 asteroids with 1% with fixed budget
  • Planning team – agree that the budgetary element was not captured well
• Commend the international nature and first time in Asia
• Maybe allow the asteroid to miss…
• Third time in a row, this asteroid snuck up from the south
  • Provide recommendation to improve radar capabilities
• Suggest to engage graduate students and in other forums
• Press Releases – how do you inform the public?