Citation

Levitin G, Hausken K. Risk Anal. 2011; 31(10): 1632-1645.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Society for Risk Analysis, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1539-6924.2011.01593.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The article considers the optimal resource distribution in a parallel system between increasing protection and providing redundancy in a situation when the attacker's and defender's resources are stockpiling and the resource increment rate is constant. It is assumed that the system must perform within an exogenously given time horizon and the attack time probability is uniformly distributed along this horizon. The defender optimizes the resource distribution in order to minimize the system destruction probability during the time horizon. First, we find the optimal pace of construction of the new redundant elements assuming that the construction must start in the initial stage of the stockpiling process. We show that starting construction of new elements in the beginning of the system's existence results in its high initial vulnerability. Introducing the time delay before starting the construction can reduce the initial system vulnerability and the entire system destruction probability. The problem of optimization of time delay and new element construction pace is considered with and without constraint on the initial system vulnerability. Examples illustrating the methodology of the optimal defense strategy analysis are presented.