Multi-layered security investment optimization using a simulation embedded within a genetic algorithm

The performance of a multi-layered security system, such as those protecting high-value facilities or critical infrastructures, is characterized using several different attributes including detection and interruption probabilities, costs, and false/nuisance alarm rates. The multitude of technology options, alternative locations and configurations for those technologies, threats to the system, and resource considerations that must be weighed make exhaustive evaluation of all possible architectures extremely difficult. This paper presents an optimization model and a computationally efficient solution procedure to identify an estimated frontier of system configuration options which represent the best design choices for the user when there is uncertainty in the response time of the security force, once an intrusion has been detected. A representative example is described.