Adversarial Risk Analysis for Counterterrorism Modeling

TLDR

Recent large‑scale terrorist attacks have spurred interest in models for allocating resources against threats, prompting the development of game‑theoretic and decision‑analytic frameworks, including the emerging adversarial risk analysis approach. The study investigates how adversarial risk analysis can be applied to standard counterterrorism models such as simultaneous defend‑attack, sequential defend‑attack‑defend, and sequential defend‑attack with private information. For each model, the authors compare a conventional game‑theoretic solution with an adversarial risk analysis solution, highlighting the use of a predictive probability model of the adversary’s actions to inform defender decisions. The results demonstrate that adversarial risk analysis can be effectively employed as a foundational building block for more complex counterterrorism risk analyses.

Abstract

Recent large‐scale terrorist attacks have raised interest in models for resource allocation against terrorist threats. The unifying theme in this area is the need to develop methods for the analysis of allocation decisions when risks stem from the intentional actions of intelligent adversaries. Most approaches to these problems have a game‐theoretic flavor although there are also several interesting decision‐analytic‐based proposals. One of them is the recently introduced framework for adversarial risk analysis, which deals with decision‐making problems that involve intelligent opponents and uncertain outcomes. We explore how adversarial risk analysis addresses some standard counterterrorism models: simultaneous defend‐attack models, sequential defend‐attack‐defend models, and sequential defend‐attack models with private information. For each model, we first assess critically what would be a typical game‐theoretic approach and then provide the corresponding solution proposed by the adversarial risk analysis framework, emphasizing how to coherently assess a predictive probability model of the adversary’s actions, in a context in which we aim at supporting decisions of a defender versus an attacker. This illustrates the application of adversarial risk analysis to basic counterterrorism models that may be used as basic building blocks for more complex risk analysis of counterterrorism problems.