When Is Information Sufficient for Action? Search with Unreliable yet Informative Intelligence

Michael Atkinson (), Moshe Kress () and Rutger-Jan Lange
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Michael Atkinson: Operations Research Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California 93943
Moshe Kress: Operations Research Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California 93943

Operations Research, 2016, vol. 64, issue 2, 315-328

Abstract: We analyze a variant of the whereabouts search problem, in which a searcher looks for a target hiding in one of n possible locations. Unlike in the classic version, our searcher does not pursue the target by actively moving from one location to the next. Instead, the searcher receives a stream of intelligence about the location of the target. At any time, the searcher can engage the location he thinks contains the target or wait for more intelligence. The searcher incurs costs when he engages the wrong location, based on insufficient intelligence, or waits too long in the hopes of gaining better situational awareness, which allows the target to either execute his plot or disappear. We formulate the searcher’s decision as an optimal stopping problem and establish conditions for optimally executing this search-and-interdict mission.

Keywords: whereabouts search; optimal stopping; multinomial selection. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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