LCCD Project: Protective Route Engine

Protective Route Engine

Given a road network describing the streets of a city, some high profile targets that terrorists might target, and some finite set of resources available for protection, how can a police, military or homeland security force best protect these potential targets? How can we build a game-theoretic model of this situation, given that the terrorists might adapt their behavior based on their perception of what our protection strategy might be? Alternatively, how can we best protect a moving asset that might be targeted by a terrorist group.

We believe that a satisfactory answer such questions will require a thorough understanding of strategies used by agents under our control (the "good guys") and their adversaries (the "bad guys"), as well as the beliefs that these agents hold about what the other will do.

In this project, we present and analyze novel methods for both attacking and defending targets. Our algorithms use a general graph-based model that translates easily to the real world and shows connections between graph algorithms and these problem. We explore the notion of optimality and, in the cases when computation of optimal strategies proves intractable, present algorithms for good approximate solutions.

We are building a prototype system to solve this problem in a scalable manner that is suitable for real world use.

Project lead: Dr. V.S. Subrahmanian.

For additional information, please contact Dr. V.S. Subrahmanian or John Dickerson.

Last updated: August 2009 by John Dickerson

Research and implementation of this project performed jointly by members of the University of Maryland and the Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

Project Contributors

John Dickerson, University of Maryland
Sarit Kraus, Bar-Ilan University
Gerardo Simari, University of Maryland
VS Subrahmanian, University of Maryland

Publications

J.P. Dickerson, G.I. Simari, V.S. Subrahmanian, Sarit Kraus. A Graph-Theoretic Approach to Protect Static and Moving Targets from Adversaries. Proc. Ninth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-2010), Toronto, Canada. May 2010.
Download from website of author Sarit Kraus (pdf).

This page will be updated as our work enters print. For information about receiving draft publications, technical reports, and conference presentations, please do not hesitate to contact team members.

The following sections may include links to restricted access material. Please do not hesitate to contact a group member for instructions regarding how to obtain a username and password.

Presentations

Presentation links contingent upon publication!

The following sections may include links to restricted access material. Please do not hesitate to contact a group member for instructions regarding how to obtain a username and password.

Downloads

Software links contingent upon publication!