New Approaches to Protecting Transportation Infrastructure

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This award is funded under the American Recovery Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This grant provides funds to explore new transportation security system paradigms that are proactive and meet the needs of our national transportation infrastructure. Methodologies from control theory and Markov decision process models and algorithms will be explored to create a new generation of security systems that are risk-based and multi-level, and hence, economically and operationally viable, robust, and sustainable. Given that terrorists remain enamored with the drama of disrupting and inflicting damage on our commercial aviation system, aviation security is the primary domain of application for such systems. The requirement to create robust and sustainable transportation infrastructure security systems suggests designs that exploit real-time, up-to-the-minute security information, which makes control theory and Markov decision process models ideally suited to exploit and manage the uncertainty and dynamics inherent in such systems. Feedback mechanisms in control theory models also provide a structure to design and analyze novel, systematic approaches to optimally exploit both existing and future security technology capabilities and information sources. The results of this research will provide a systematic approach to compare and evaluate different types of risk-based, multi-level transportation security system designs and operations that incorporate both new and existing security technologies. This approach also has the potential to be used to design and implement new transportation security systems capable of enhancing the level of security attainable given the security resources and technologies that are currently available or may be available in the next twenty years. The results of this research may also be used to quantify the value of new investments in different types of transportation security technologies, to determine, for example, their potential impact on enhancing aviation security at airports within the nation. Lastly, this research will provide insights into the development of next generation transportation security system paradigm performance specifications that will push forward the boundary of achievable levels of security, given existing and forecasted budgetary constraints.