Rationality and Optimality of Transportation Networks Defense

Since the days of the Roman Empire transportation networks have been one of the cornerstones for the strength and stability of states. Maintaining the availability of roads and the safety of travelers was always an important challenge for rulers and governments. Transportation systems in most of modern countries are considered nowadays relatively safe. However, maintaining their safety requires constant monitoring and law enforcement. With the increase in the complexity of transportation systems, combining various types of land, air and marine vehicles, both private and public, the challenge of monitoring them becomes both increasingly difficult and important. In fact, attackers and disturbing factors that threaten transportation networks usually get to their destination using this network as well. For example, a group of terrorists that are planning to carry out an attack (such as hijacking an airplane or exploding a subway station) will most likely get to their destination using some means of transportation. When it comes to their security profile, transportation networks, therefore, have a unique feature, being both a potential target for an attack and the mean to carry it.

Ideally, each transportation network (global, national and urban) should have been built while incorporating a monitoring station alongside each of its routes and intersections. This, however, is not feasible due to privacy reasons and financial and operational considerations. It is hence crucial to find deployment schemes for monitoring stations that would analytically guarantee the maximization of traffic monitoring, using a limited number of monitoring units. Such a scheme could be used to calculate either a static deployment of large scale monitoring units, or a dynamic on-demand deployment that could be implemented as an urgent response for a specific threat. Ultimately, this system would provide the maximal detection probability of threat agents for a specific budget, or alternatively — minimal number of monitoring units for a pre-defined requested detection probability. These monitoring stations may be either police patrols, automatic units for detecting biologic, chemical or radiologic hazards, or any other monitoring units.

In order to produce efficient deployment schemes, the traffic pattern of the users of the transportation system must be thoroughly studied. The analysis of mobility trends and demands forecasting in transportation networks relies nowadays heavily on household survey data that provides the required input for calibrating the mathematical models that represent decisions people make related to travel [37]. However, a well known problem common to all interview-type surveys is non-response. Complex methods to correct for non-response have been developed; however, these alleviate the problem only partially [34].

As mentioned in [8], another limitation of household surveys is the need for active cooperation from the respondents, relying on their memory and patience. The need for active participation reduces the ability to capture complex travel and activity patterns, and the ability to collect data over a long period of time. The problems mentioned above, coupled with budget constraints, explain the fact that typical household surveys collect data regarding a period of merely one or two days for each household. As a result, there exists a strong need for finding an alternative mechanism of assessing mobility and traffic demand in transportation networks, one that could be used without the necessary, tedious and inaccurate process of surveying.

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