A post-detection policy (PDP), also known as a post-detection protocol, is a set of structured rules, standards, guidelines, or actions that governmental or other organizational entities plan to follow for the "detection, analysis, verification, announcement, and response to" confirmed signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.[1] Though no PDPs have been formally and openly adopted by any governmental entity, there is significant work being done by scientists and nongovernmental organizations to develop cohesive plans of action to utilize in the event of detection. The most popular and well known of these is the "Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence", which was developed by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), with the support of the International Institute of Space Law.[2] The theories of PDPs constitute a distinct area of research but draw heavily from the fields of SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), and CETI (Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence).
Scientist Zbigniew Paptrotny has argued that the formulation of post-detection protocols can be guided by three factors: terrestrial society's readiness to accept the news of ET detection, how the news of detection is released, and the comprehensibility of the message in the signal.[3] These three broad areas and their related subsidiaries comprise the bulk of the content and discourse surrounding PDPs.