Optimal operation of surveillance towers with limited manpower
Authors
Lin, Che-Shiung
Subjects
Advisors
Lin, Kyle Y.
Date of Issue
2010-09
Date
Publisher
Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School
Language
Abstract
Tower-based surveillance systems have been employed by the U.S. military to enhance intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. We consider a scenario wherein two surveillance towers are installed in separate locations; however, the surveillance team does not have enough operators to operate both towers to their capacity. Two strategies can be used to operate these two towers: stationary and dynamic. We formulate a two-person nonzero-sum game to analyze these strategies, in which the surveillance team wants to maintain regional stability while insurgents carry out attacks to disrupt it. Our analysis suggests that the dynamic allocation strategy can improve the performance of surveillance towers over stationary allocation under most circumstances. The improvement tends to be more significant when the surveillance team has more surveillance resource. The dynamic allocation tends to be less effective when (1) a detected attack has a smaller negative impact on the insurgent operations, or when (2) a detected attack brings a larger immediate benefit to the surveillance team.
Type
Thesis
Description
Series/Report No
Department
Operations Research
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
xvi, 47 p. : ill. (some col.) ;
Citation
Distribution Statement
Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.