Publications

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The 2015 Planetary Defense Conference (2015 PDC) was held in Frascati, Italy on April 13-17 by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). In addition to customary technical sessions, we performed the first week-long threat exercise designed to simulate and examine the process of decision making that would accompany the discovery and response to an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Our role in the exercise was to develop and present a plausible scenario that would be of interest to as many participants as possible while considering the broad diversity in technical expertise, approach, values, missions, and national affiliations of the conference attendees. Moreover, we strove to present a reasonable sequence of events spanning several years that would provide many opportunities for collective decision making under uncertainty by parties likely to have conflicting interests. In order to hold the attention of the participants throughout the week we tried to create a scenario that would be as dramatic as possible - including cliffhangers and unexpected turns of events - but without sacrificing realism. This allowed us to discuss a wide range of potential responses, including kinetic and nuclear deflection, and potential outcomes, including tsunami-forming ocean impacts, crater-forming land impacts, and airbursts by objects over a large size range. In addition to creating the scenario, members of our team served on an expert panel in a role-playing exercise that included participants acting as world leaders of nations, both directly and indirectly affected members of the public in at-risk areas, and the media. This paper summarizes the exercise, focusing on physical and infrastructure modeling. The exercise spanned the entire week, with daily injects (or updates) of new observed data about what was currently known on the imaginary date. We presented models of potential physical effects and resulting infrastructure damage, with emphasis on the uncertainties. Seven updates spanned most of the time between when the asteroid (dubbed 2015 PDC) was discovered on April 13, 2015, and its impact date of September 3, 2022. Information about the orbit and technical response options were presented as a set of faux press releases that were made available to participants prior to each briefing. The scenario was based on an actual calculated orbit to provide as much realism as possible. The physical effects at each stage were predicted by using simulations for airburst and tsunami generation, and a shallow water model for tsunami propagation. Maps were generated using tools developed for the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), and were presented by expert panelists as part of a mock press briefing at each inject. We present the contents of those press briefings and put them into context with the threat exercise.

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We describe the computational simulations and damage assessments that we provided in support of a tabletop exercise (TTX) at the request of NASA's Near-Earth Objects Program Office. The overall purpose of the exercise was to assess leadership reactions, information requirements, and emergency management responses to a hypothetical asteroid impact with Earth. The scripted exercise consisted of discovery, tracking, and characterization of a hypothetical asteroid; inclusive of mission planning, mitigation, response, impact to population, infrastructure and GDP, and explicit quantification of uncertainty. Participants at the meeting included representatives of NASA, Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the White House. The exercise took place at FEMA headquarters. Sandia's role was to assist the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in developing the impact scenario, to predict the physical effects of the impact, and to forecast the infrastructure and economic losses. We ran simulations using Sandia's CTH hydrocode to estimate physical effects on the ground, and to produce contour maps indicating damage assessments that could be used as input for the infrastructure and economic models. We used the FASTMap tool to provide estimates of infrastructure damage over the affected area, and the REAcct tool to estimate the potential economic severity expressed as changes to GDP (by nation, region, or sector) due to damage and short-term business interruptions.

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In October 2000, the personnel responsible for administration of the corporate computers managed by the Scientific Computing Department assembled to reengineer the process of creating and deleting users' computer accounts. Using the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for quality improvement process, the team performed the reengineering by way of process modeling, defining and measuring the maturity of the processes, per SEI and CMM practices. The computers residing in the classified environment are bound by security requirements of the Secure Classified Network (SCN) Security Plan. These security requirements delimited the scope of the project, specifically mandating validation of all user accounts on the central corporate computer systems. System administrators, in addition to their assigned responsibilities, were spending valuable hours performing the additional tacit responsibility of tracking user accountability for user-generated data. For example, in cases where the data originator was no longer an employee, the administrators were forced to spend considerable time and effort determining the appropriate management personnel to assume ownership or disposition of the former owner's data files. In order to prevent this sort of problem from occurring and to have a defined procedure in the event of an anomaly, the computer account management procedure was thoroughly reengineered, as detailed in this document. An automated procedure is now in place that is initiated and supplied data by central corporate processes certifying the integrity, timeliness and authentication of account holders and their management. Automated scripts identify when an account is about to expire, to preempt the problem of data becoming ''orphaned'' without a responsible ''owner'' on the system. The automated account-management procedure currently operates on and provides a standard process for all of the computers maintained by the Scientific Computing Department.