THE APPLICATION OF RISK MANAGEMENT TO THE NEO THREAT

Abstract

AbstractIn the spring of 1995, the author, as Adjunct Professor of Engineering at the University of Southern California, developed a new graduate level course in risk management applied to problems in systems engineering and program management. The class project for this course was the near‐earth‐object (NEO) threat. Risk management has been one of the most recent arrivals to be recognized within systems engineering, but it is usually ad hoc and qualitative. The core of this new course established risk management on the foundation of probabilistic decision theory. For the class project, the students were asked to develop decision networks, probability assessments, and alternative criteria relating to the conduct of a planetary defense program. A good consensus was obtained: all investments for acceleration of NEO detection and characterization as well as preliminary design of mitigation systems were shown to be very cost effective, key risk reduction tests on mitigation technologies were recommended within limits, and the full deployment of actual mitigation systems should be paced by the results of the NEO detection program.