Security and Game Theory Algorithms, Deployed Systems, Lessons Learned

Global threats of terrorism, drug-smuggling and other crimes have led to a significant increase in research on game theory for security. Game theory provides a sound mathematical approach to deploy limited security resources to maximize their effectiveness. A typical approach is to randomize security schedules to avoid predictability, with the randomization using artificial intelligence techniques to take into account the importance of different targets and potential adversary reactions. This book distills the forefront of this research to provide the first and only study of long-term deployed applications of game theory for security for key organizations such as the Los Angeles International Airport police and the US Federal Air Marshals Service. The author and his research group draw from their extensive experience working with security officials to intelligently allocate limited security resources to protect targets, outlining the applications of these algorithms in research and the real world.

1. Introduction; Part I. Security Experts' Perspective: 2. LAX - terror target: the history, the reason, the countermeasure Erroll Southers; 3. Maritime transportation system security and the use of game theory: a perfect match to address operational and tactical concerns Joe DiRenzo III, Erik Jensen and Fred Bertsch; Part II. Deployed Applications: 4. Deployed ARMOR protection: the application of a game theoretic model for security at the Los Angeles International Airport James Pita, Manish Jain, Craig Western, Praveen Paruchuri, Janusz Marecki, Milind Tambe, Fernando Ordonez and Sarit Kraus; 5. IRIS: a tool for strategic security allocation in transportation networks Jason Tsai, Shyamsunder Rathi, Christopher Kiekintveld, Milind Tambe and Fernando Ordonez; 6. GUARDS - game theoretic security allocation on a national scale James Pita, Christopher Kiekintveld, Milind Tambe, Shane Cullen and Erin Steigerwald; Part III. Efficient Algorithms for Massive Security Games: 7. Coordinating randomized policies for increasing security of agent systems Praveen Paruchuri, Jonathan Pearce, Janusz Marecki, Milind Tambe, Fernando Ordonez and Sarit Kraus; 8. Computing optimal randomized resource allocations for massive security games Christopher Kiekintveld, James Pita, Manish Jain, Jason Tsai, Milind Tambe and Fernando Ordonez; 9. Security games with arbitrary schedules: a branch and price approach Manish Jain, Christopher Kiekintveld, Erim Kardes, Fernando Ordonez and Milind Tambe; Part IV. Future Research: 10. Effective solutions for real-world Stackelberg games: when agents must deal with human uncertainties James Pita, Manish Jain, Milind Tambe, Fernando Ordonez, Sarit Kraus and Romi Magori-Cohen; 11. Robust Bayesian methods for Stackelberg security games Christopher Kiekintveld, Janusz Marecki and Milind Tambe; 12. Stackelberg vs. Nash in security games: interchangeability, equivalence, and uniqueness Zhengyu Yin, Dmytro Korzhyk, Christopher Kiekintveld, Vincent Conitzer and Milind Tambe; 13. Evaluating deployed decision support systems for security: challenges, arguments, and approaches Matthew E. Taylor, Christopher Kiekintveld and Milind Tambe.

Game theory provides a sound mathematical approach to maximizing limited security resources. This book distills the forefront of this research to provide the first and only study of long-term deployed applications of game theory for key security organizations such as the Los Angeles International Airport police and US Federal Air Marshals Service.

Milind Tambe is a Professor of Computer Science and Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). His research is in the area of Artificial Intelligence, specifically agent-based and multi-agent systems. He is a Fellow of the Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery's Autonomous Agents Research Award. He is also the recipient of the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland Security Award, a special commendation given by the Los Angeles International Airport's police from the city of Los Angeles, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's use-inspired research award, an Okawa Foundation faculty research award, the RoboCup scientific challenge award, the USC Steven B. Sample Teaching and Mentoring award and the ACM recognition of service award.