13 research outputs found
On the Inducibility of Stackelberg Equilibrium for Security Games
Strong Stackelberg equilibrium (SSE) is the standard solution concept of
Stackelberg security games. As opposed to the weak Stackelberg equilibrium
(WSE), the SSE assumes that the follower breaks ties in favor of the leader and
this is widely acknowledged and justified by the assertion that the defender
can often induce the attacker to choose a preferred action by making an
infinitesimal adjustment to her strategy. Unfortunately, in security games with
resource assignment constraints, the assertion might not be valid; it is
possible that the defender cannot induce the desired outcome. As a result, many
results claimed in the literature may be overly optimistic. To remedy, we first
formally define the utility guarantee of a defender strategy and provide
examples to show that the utility of SSE can be higher than its utility
guarantee. Second, inspired by the analysis of leader's payoff by Von Stengel
and Zamir (2004), we provide the solution concept called the inducible
Stackelberg equilibrium (ISE), which owns the highest utility guarantee and
always exists. Third, we show the conditions when ISE coincides with SSE and
the fact that in general case, SSE can be extremely worse with respect to
utility guarantee. Moreover, introducing the ISE does not invalidate existing
algorithmic results as the problem of computing an ISE polynomially reduces to
that of computing an SSE. We also provide an algorithmic implementation for
computing ISE, with which our experiments unveil the empirical advantage of the
ISE over the SSE.Comment: The Thirty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligenc
Allocating Limited Resources to Protect a Massive Number of Targets using a Game Theoretic Model
Resource allocation is the process of optimizing the rare resources. In the
area of security, how to allocate limited resources to protect a massive number
of targets is especially challenging. This paper addresses this resource
allocation issue by constructing a game theoretic model. A defender and an
attacker are players and the interaction is formulated as a trade-off between
protecting targets and consuming resources. The action cost which is a
necessary role of consuming resource, is considered in the proposed model.
Additionally, a bounded rational behavior model (Quantal Response, QR), which
simulates a human attacker of the adversarial nature, is introduced to improve
the proposed model. To validate the proposed model, we compare the different
utility functions and resource allocation strategies. The comparison results
suggest that the proposed resource allocation strategy performs better than
others in the perspective of utility and resource effectiveness.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, 41 reference
Adversarial Decision Making in Counterterrorism Applications
Our main objective is to improve decision making in counterterrorism applications by implementing expected utility for prescriptive decision making and prospect theory for descriptive modeling. The areas that we aim to improve are behavioral modeling of adversaries with multi objectives in counterterrorism applications and incorporating risk attitudes of decision makers to risk matrices in assessing risk within an adversarial counterterrorism framework. Traditionally, counterterrorism applications have been approached on a single attribute basis. We utilize a multi-attribute prospect theory approach to more realistically model the attacker’s behavior, while using expected utility theory to prescribe the appropriate actions to the defender. We evaluate our approach by considering an attacker with multiple objectives who wishes to smuggle radioactive material into the United States and a defender who has the option to implement a screening process to hinder the attacker. Next, we consider the use of risk matrices (a method widely used for assessing risk given a consequence and a probability pairing of a potential threat) in an adversarial framework – modeling an attacker and defender risk matrix using utility theory and linking the matrices with the Luce model. A shortcoming with modeling the attacker and the defender risk matrix using utility theory is utility theory’s failure to account for the decision makers’ deviation from rational behavior as seen in experimental literature. We consider an adversarial risk matrix framework that models the attacker risk matrix using prospect theory to overcome this shortcoming, while using expected utility theory to prescribe actions to the defender
Adversarial patrolling with spatially uncertain alarm signals
When securing complex infrastructures or large environments, constant surveillance of every area is not affordable. To cope with this issue, a common countermeasure is the usage of cheap but wide-ranged sensors, able to detect suspicious events that occur in large areas, supporting patrollers to improve the effectiveness of their strategies. However, such sensors are commonly affected by uncertainty. In the present paper, we focus on spatially uncertain alarm signals. That is, the alarm system is able to detect an attack but it is uncertain on the exact position where the attack is taking place. This is common when the area to be secured is wide, such as in border patrolling and fair site surveillance. We propose, to the best of our knowledge, the first Patrolling Security Game where a Defender is supported by a spatially uncertain alarm system, which non-deterministically generates signals once a target is under attack. We show that finding the optimal strategy is FNP-hard even in tree graphs and APX-hard in arbitrary graphs. We provide two (exponential time) exact algorithms and two (polynomial time) approximation algorithms. Finally, we show that, without false positives and missed detections, the best patrolling strategy reduces to stay in a place, wait for a signal, and respond to it at best. This strategy is optimal even with non-negligible missed detection rates, which, unfortunately, affect every commercial alarm system. We evaluate our methods in simulation, assessing both quantitative and qualitative aspects