NASA’s Asteroid Initiative: Partnership and Participatory Engagement

1. NASA’s Asteroid Initiative: Partnership and Participatory Engagement Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology Presented at the Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis Workshop Houston, TX October 1, 2013

2. Policy relevance Interface with policy-makers Broad dissemination Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) Nonpartisan Policy Research Organizations Science Museums Universities Direct public interface Trusted public educators Innovation in citizen-friendly pedagogy Innovation in TA concepts/methods Research, analysis and evaluation Training of researchers/practitioners

3. Partnership & Participation: The Grand Challenge Find all asteroid threats to human populations and know what to do about them “Rarely has the agency proposed an idea so controversial among lawmakers, so fraught with technical and scientific uncertainties, and so hard to explain to ordinary people.” - Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post, August 17, 2013 Advancing human exploration goals. Involving a broad community. Making participation highly desirable. Generating momentum with goals. Expanding planetary defense. Anticipating spillover effect of technologies. Seeing nation’s future role in space.

4. governmentleader businessleader worker high school / college student school student citizen scientist/engineer consumer media parent educator Sustained Co-production Situating the Asteroid Initiative within the Lifecycle of a Decision-maker

5. Participation in an Anticipatory Governance Framework • Anticipatory Governance • Foresight • All governance requires a disposition toward future • Engagement • Crucial normatively, strategically, pragmatically • Integration • Scientists know things we don’t, and vice versa • Ensemble-ization • None of these works in isolation • Increase public understanding of and engagement in Asteroid Initiative policy matters • Transition to a public engagement models • Scientists, NASA Personnel, Public • Solicit informed, structured feedback from citizens in multiple geographic regions • Multi-site structured deliberations • Based on NASA expert generated contents • Have continued feedback for future Asteroid Initiative for outreach approaches • Outcomes research on public participation methods • Dissemination of best practices • Provide onramp for public to engage in related, ongoing activities • Engagement modules for science centers • Connect citizen science efforts with decision making A broad-based capacity extended through society that can act on a variety of inputs to manage emerging knowledge-based technologies while such management is still possible. “anticipatory democracy”

6. Can Get There from Here Research on Deliberative Methods Citizen Science to Citizen Policy Using crowdsourcing to collect, classify and share data and content and facilitate information retrieval for all users of public information. Using smart devices to report potholes, faulty traffic lights and other inconveniences to make local government more responsive Using participatory methods to discuss complex issues on global warming and produce an outcome usable to policymakers. Public Understanding to Engagement • Center for the Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) • Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISENet) • Association of Science- Technology Centers (ASTC) PES Community of Practice “Competent social scientists should work hand-in-hand with natural scientists, so that problems may be solved as they arise, and so that many of them may not arise in the first instance.” - DetlevBronk

7. Results reported instantly to a website and compared across age groups, countries, regions and continents as they are produced. Analyzed and communicated in documentary films and policy reports about the process and results. biodiversity.wwviews.org Disseminated through educational and outreach activities in formal and informal settings. Presented at UN Convention on Biological Diversity Meeting (COP11) in India on October 2012. Used as an important baseline for research, education and design of future awareness raising initiatives.

8. Summary and Conclusions • The Grander Challenge: Sustained Co-production of Plausible Futures for the Asteroid Initiative • Partnership and Participation needs to be placed in an Anticipatory Governance inspired Capability Driven Framework combining natural and physical sciences with the state of the art in social sciences. • Leveraging opportunities are provided by distributed institutional network of Universities, Non-profits, Citizen Science Projects and Informal Science Education Centers NASA is strongly encouraged to: • Establish engagement as part of the core planning process for the Asteroid Initiative. • Proactively design a space program that will deliver on public values. • Rapidly deploy low cost pilot participatory engagement projects based on proven methods. • Engage the broadest communities to determine the best science to produce. • Provide publicly vetted and collectively developed goals. • Activate participatory governance and compare process/outcomes to current federal public solicitation activities. • Situate the Asteroid Initiative as a critical waypoint step in its broad history of participatory exploration.