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PROJECT DETAILS

Project Type
UTRC Faculty Development Mini-grants
Project Dates
10/01/2012 - 03/31/2014
Principal Investigators
Project Status
Complete

A physical attack planned by terrorists to the U.S. includes complex strategic behaviors of terrorists because they may intend to cross any U.S. border. At the same time, a defensive entity should consider the complex process that may cause catastrophic results once it would happen. This strategic game situation is much clearer for the case of cyber-terror attacks. For example, if cyber terrorists are able to successfully invade one of the U.S. airport systems to causing a problem in operational software that controls all airplane schedules, the one event may affect not only the entire region that the airport is located in, but also other domestic and international airports that are connected to that airport. The airport shut down will make a ripple effect throughout the domestic and international economy. Suggesting a new framework to quantify the economic impacts on the strategic border and infrastructure security requires combining the probability of invasion with economic impacts; a new probabilistic economic impact model can provide a differentiated economic impact by region and by industry. Therefore, the distinctive feature of this study is to suggest the strategic situation of terrorists combining game theory with a spatially disaggregate economic model. Constructing a new model for strategic cyber-terror security requires a combination of both competitive and cooperative game situations with the National Interstate Economic Model (NIEMO), generating the Game Theoretic National Interstate Economic Model (G-NIEMO). The G-NIEMO quantifies which airport may be most vulnerable in terms of cyber security by event place and by target industry, if an airport is subsequently closed based on the probabilistic costs for airport closure. From G-NIEMO, the equilibrium strategies for U.S. airport protection can be measured, providing a general guideline on the evaluation of resource allocations by U.S. governments.