NEO Mitigation and Coordination with the Disaster Management Community
Chapman, Clark; Schweickart, R.
B612 Foundation

In its report, "Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response," the Association of Space Explorers and its international Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation call on the United Nations to form an information, analysis, and warning network which would, among other functions, establish regular communication between the international NEO community and the established international disaster response agencies.

In cases where, for one reason or another, a threatening NEO is not a candidate for deflection, the response of the international community to the threat is reduced to mitigation measures, principally evacuation of the impact site. Many issues regarding the pathways between astronomical observation, impact calculations, notification of the general public, and involvement of the disaster response community and public officials need to be addressed. Follow-on procedures interfacing new data with decision-making in both national and international disaster response communities must also be cooperatively established.

An early, low-level example of such interaction is illustrated by the existence of many near-term, low probability impact events in the current JPL risk database. Most of these potential impacts are either too close in time or have too low a probability of occurrence to justify mounting a deflection campaign. Nevertheless the combined risk of these events may warrant coordination and policy development with NEO and disaster response and planning communities. While half of the low probability impacts would strike at night and therefore allow a month or more of warning using optical systems, the other half will be potential daytime impactors, so that warning may be limited to several days assuming the availability of radar telescopes.

These and many other NEO impact threat situations argue strongly for early coordination and policy development between the established international disaster management community and the proposed international information, analysis, and warning network. Initiation of this coordination is urgent given the accelerated rate of new NEO discoveries anticipated with the introduction of Pan-STARRS and LSST to the early warning program.