5th Annual
Conference
Mathematical Methods in Counterterrorism
Abstracts
Inference and Interdiction in a Terror Queue Model
Edward H. Kaplan
William N and Marie A Beach Professor of Management Sciences
Yale School of Management
Abstract:
Prior research addressing the tactical prevention of suicide bombings
in Israel suggests that HUMINT-driven arrests of terror suspects are
principally responsible for the observed decline in successful attacks
on Israeli civilians. Motivated by this finding, the present analysis
presents a new queueing model relating terror threats and their
detection by HUMINT agents with an eye towards understanding how
preventive counterterror measures and HUMINT combine to enable the
interdiction of terror suspects. A byproduct of the analysis is the
ability to gauge the number of undetected terror plots in progress
from the known utilization of HUMINT agents.