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Game-Theoretic and Reliability Methods in Counterterrorism and Security

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Statistical Methods in Counterterrorism

5 Conclusions

As noted above, protecting engineered systems against intentional attacks is likely to require a combination of game theory and reliability analysis. Risk and reliability analysis by itself will likely not be sufficient to address many critical security challenges, since it does not take into account the attacker’s response to the implementation of reliability or security improvements. However, most current applications of game theory to security deal with individual components or assets in isolation, and hence could benefit from the use of reliability analysis tools and methods to more fully model the risks to complex networked systems such as computer systems, electricity transmission systems, or transportation systems. In the long run, approaches that embed systems reliability models in a game-theoretic framework may make it possible to take advantage of the strengths of both approaches.

This article is a revision of an article originally published in Modern Statistical and Mathematical Methods in Reliability (2005), World Scientific Publishing Company [Bie05].

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  1. Center for Human Performance and Risk Analysis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison

    Vicki Bier

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  1. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, 87545, USA

    Alyson G. Wilson  & Gregory D. Wilson  & 

  2. Department of Systems Engineering, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 93943, USA

    David H. Olwell

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Bier, V. (2006). Game-Theoretic and Reliability Methods in Counterterrorism and Security. In: Wilson, A.G., Wilson, G.D., Olwell, D.H. (eds) Statistical Methods in Counterterrorism. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-35209-0_3

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