Game Theory Based Identification Of Facility Use Prohibitions For The Movement Of Hazardous Materials Under Terrorist Threat
The modeling tools that have been developed over the last 25 years for the identification of routes for hazmat shipments emphasize the tradeoffs between cost minimization to the shipper/carrier and controlling the "natural" consequences that would stem from an accident. As the terrorist threat has grown, it has become clear that a new perspective, which allows for the representation of the goals and activities of terrorists, must be incorporated into these routing models. Government agencies can determine which specific facilities to restrict for each class of material and for which times of the day and/or week. This paper develops a mathematical model of a threeplayer game to represent the interactions among government agencies a shipper and terrorists as a framework for the analysis. It also develops an effective solution procedure for this game and illustrates the use of that procedure on a realistic case study.