Nuclear Weapons Effects Phenomenology

The nuclear weapons community has traditionally focused on the next generation or level of weapon capability complimented by gathering and analysis of actual test data. Now, with the cessation of actual weapons testing, there is an increased need to use the actual test data in modeling techniques to better understand the phenomenology and potential effects of nuclear weapons. The first phase of this project will concentrate on demonstrating the feasibility of obtaining, archiving, storing, and using weapons data to improve the understanding of nuclear weapons effects (NWE). One subset of NWE data will be used as a prototype in designing a tiered architecture for a user friendly, relational database. The second phase of the work will focus on expanding the research from Phase I and on developing algorithms and their associated computer codes the computer databases and codes that result from this research could assist in the development of codes to determine earthquake effects, pollution transport, and signal propagation. The processes used for data retrieval and archival could help establish standards for other meta-files of data and for the evaluation of tests standards for data.