Adversarial Risk Analysis for Urban Security Resource Allocation

Abstract

Adversarial risk analysis (ARA) provides a framework to deal with risks originating from intentional actions of adversaries. We show how ARA may be used to allocate security resources in the protection of urban spaces. We take into account the spatial structure and consider both proactive and reactive measures, in that we aim at both trying to reduce criminality as well as recovering as best as possible from it, should it happen. We deal with the problem by deploying an ARA model over each spatial unit, coordinating the models through resource constraints, value aggregation, and proximity. We illustrate our approach with an example that uncovers several relevant policy issues.

Keywords: Adversarial risk analysis; decision analysis; defend-attack-defend model; security; spatial models.