Deceptive tactics for protecting cities against Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices

Abstract

This thesis focuses on interdiction of Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED) on a major city by using "transparent" and "deceptive" assets. Transparent assets (e.g., road blocks) are those for which we assume positions are known by both attackers and interdictors. "Decoys" and "traps" are deceptive assets. Decoys are meant to be perceived as effective interdiction assets by attackers, while traps are not perceived. We use a mathematical optimization model to allocate interdiction assets maximizing expected interdicted "value." Then, we use agent-based simulation to assess the effectiveness of those interdiction plans against a variety of attacker's behaviors: perceptive (as assumed by the optimization), naiÌ ve, communicative, route blocker (static), route blocker (dynamic) and clairvoyant. We use two test networks and seven scenarios consisting of different combinations of interdiction assets. From our analysis we note that: (a) if the network incorporates deception, any behavior other than perceptive may be advantageous to the attacker; (b) a communicative behavior proves effective for the attackers against scenarios containing traps; (c) decoys are most effective if used in defense against perceptive-like behaviors; and, (d) if the defender expects perceptive-like behavior, then adding transparent assets to traps and decoys may be of little value.