Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

Most of social, economic, and industrial operations today rely heavily on the undisrupted functioning of systems such as transportation and public transit networks, postal delivery services, telecommunications network, electric power generation and distribution, water supply, public healthcare and medical emergency systems, manufacturing and distribution of natural gas and petroleum distribution systems among others. In recent years, the growing interdependency of these networks along with globalization have significantly increased their vulnerability to disruptions due to natural disasters, intentional and unintentional human actions (e.g. terrorist attacks, labor strikes, sabotage) or operational contingencies (e.g. random failures - machine breakdown, transportation delays etc.). Researchers have developed a wide variety of models that incorporate reliability, resiliency, responsiveness and robustness in the system to handle disruptions from random failures or natural disasters with little or no degradation in its performance. However, recent incidents have shown that these systems are highly vulnerable to intentional threats. Contrary to popular belief, studies have shown that a well-designed and coordinated small-scale intentional attack can inflict more damage than the random acts of nature. One of the major challenges in operating these systems is to protect them against vulnerability to intentional threats and disruption risks. The proposed research program aims to develop decision tools that will maximize the robustness of networks to intentional attacks by exploring the use of an important class of problems known as network interdiction and fortification/protection planning problems. Network interdiction refers to the forbidding or halting of an adversary’s activity on a network whereas fortification planning refers to the identification of critical components and deployment of critical protection resources to minimize the disruptions due to interdiction. The proposed project will build a variety of integrated mathematical models and novel solution approaches to understand the interaction and the interdependencies of the network interdiction and protection planning problems and their impact on the robust design and tactical planning decisions in logistics networks. Three types of logistics networks will be investigated: hub-and-spoke, supply chain and logistics, and hazardous material (hazmat) transportation networks. The models and insights from this research will act as a useful decision support tool in a variety of applications ranging from commercial supply chains and logistics companies to non-commercial settings such as national security, counter-terrorism, the interception of contraband and illegal items such as drugs, weapons, or nuclear material, and infectious disease control.