  Neutral tungsten is the primary candidate as a wall material in the divertor
region of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The
efficient operation of ITER depends heavily on precise atomic physics
calculations for the determination of reliable erosion diagnostics, helping to
characterise the influx of tungsten impurities into the core plasma. The
following paper presents detailed calculations of the atomic structure of
neutral tungsten using the multiconfigurational Dirac-Fock method, drawing
comparisons with experimental measurements where available, and includes a
critical assessment of existing atomic structure data. We investigate the
electron-impact excitation of neutral tungsten using the Dirac R-matrix method
and, by employing collisional-radiative models, we benchmark our results with
recent Compact Toroidal Hybrid measurements. The resulting comparisons
highlight alternative diagnostic lines to the widely used 400.88nm line.
