Evaluating Investments in Asteroid Detection Technologies to Prevent Catastrophic Impacts on Earth

Abstract

Asteroids and other near-earth objects pose a significant ongoing threat to our planet, with the potential for catastrophic effects on human lives, the environment, and the global economy. Advance warning would be necessary to deflect any object on a collision course with the Earth, but detection and tracking technologies require substantial financial commitments. In this paper, we provide a multiattribute utility framework to analyze whether and which asteroid detection technologies are worthwhile. This framework enables rigorous and systematic understanding of the uncertainties, multiple objectives, and tradeoffs inherent to advance decisions involving low-probability, high-consequence events. Using some reasonable baseline parameter esti- mates, the model shows that, remarkably, the detection technology investment decision is driven more by the abundant population of small (<140-meter diameter) undiscovered near-earth objects than any other size group. We subsequently extend the framework to consider how a decision maker might evaluate alternatives when the risk affects a larger group of people while the economic cost of investment is shouldered by a smaller subset of stakeholders.

Keywords: Public Sector Applications, Risk Mitigation, Decision Analysis, Multi-Attribute Utility, Public Policy

JEL Classification: H56, Z18