NEO Impact Simulation

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NEO Impact Simulation

• Nicholas J. Bailey

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Presentation Overview

• Project Overview
• Past Work
• What Ive been working on
• Literature review
• Finding heading
• Present Status
• Current work
• Requirements
• Future Program and Direction
• Where the project is heading
• Finding my niche

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Project Overview

• Sub-kilometre diameter objects
• Aims
• Simulate NEO impacts on the Earth
• Estimate casualty figures
• Risk assessment of the hazard
• Reducing the Risk
• Public perception of the risk
• Current risk estimate
• Impact Scenario
• Space Atmosphere Impact (Land / Ocean)

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The Literature

• Divided into four topics
• Population NEOs in orbit
• Atmosphere atmospheric entry
• Land Impacts solid earth target
• Ocean Impacts water target
• Little overlap between topics

Concerning the pre-impact objects

• Population Estimates
• Identification and characterisation of orbital
  NEOs
• Lead by Space Agencies
• Contribution by astronomers
• Spaceguard Survey
• LINEAR

• Atmospheric Attenuation
• Fragmentation and ablation due to aerodynamic
  heating
• Dates to Öpiks work
• Tunguska airburst of 1908
• Meteor showers
• Shoemaker-Levy 9

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Literature

• Land Impacts (1/3)
• NEOs colliding with solid earth generating
  craters
• Good public understanding
• Physical scars remain
• Chicxulub dinosaurs
• Large tnstantaneous death toll with long term
  consequences

• Ocean Impacts (2/3)
• Impacting water and generating a tidal wave
• Scenario in Hollywoods Deep Impact
• Tsunami generation
• Global consequences
• No historicle evidence
• Large death toll in short term, little knock on
  consequence

• Historical impact events
• Little experience of actual events
• Sikhote Alin in East Russia 1946
• No confirmed human casualties
• one Egyptian dog in 1911
• however average of 300-3000 deaths per year

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Culmination of the Literature

• 100 page report covering literature
• Provide a reference for the future
• Valuable report writing experience
• Conclusions
• Draws out the critical mathematics
• Highlights key references
• Discovers areas for further work
• a reference
• Gained transferable skills
• LaTeX
• C / C
• Technical writing
• Boxing Day 2004 Tsunami
• Asteroid 2004 MN4

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Current Work

• Considered the problem in relation of where work
  is required
• Noted issues that might arise during the program
  development
• Planning the software
• Assessing the user requirements
• Studying the software requirements
• ESA Standards for architectural design

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User Requirements

• Who are the users
• National or international?
• Why do they need it?
• How will they use it?
• International usership assumed
• Considdering global effects
• Less accurate on a national scale
• Accurate global bathymetry (30 seconds 1km)

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Software Requirements

• Solving the user requirements
• How it will work
• Architectural design
• Modular system
• Front end of the system
• Compatability
• Ease of use

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Future Work

• Architectural Design
• Main focus following 9-month
• Plan the approach to programming
• Make the system modular
• Fundamental to
• Achieving the aims
• Following standards
• Understanding and maintaining a grasp on the
  project
• Using Visio to build architectural design

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Finding My Niche

• Highlighted from the literature review
• Particular areas of interest
• Explore in more detail
• Maintain vigilance for other areas and new
  literature
• Make a contribution to science
• Directly NEO related

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Future Progress

• Improve my C programming skills
• Build the system
• Build in a logical order
• Make use of modular approach
• Find my feet in this field
• Keep up-to-date with literature
• Attend conferences
• Experience of international conferences
• Present my work in an appropriate arena

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Conclusion

• Potential outcomes
• System used as part of a new Spaceguard survey
  (akin to the Torino scale)
• Develop a hazard scale for classifying impact
  events
• Build on the global system to accurately analyse
  local area effects
• Save lives in the event of a detected inbound NEO