Green Security Games

Security is a global concern, requiring efficient, randomized allocation and scheduling of limited security resources. To that end, we have used computational game theory to build decision aids for security agencies around the world, leading to the creation of a new research area of “security games”. Today security-games based decision aids for infrastructure security are deployed in the US and internationally for protection of ports, airports, air traffic, trains and campuses. This talk will focus on our recent work on “green security games” that builds on this previous work. Green security games and their applications are focused on deploying limited security resources to protect forests, fish, wildlife, e.g., assisting security agencies against poaching, illegal fishing or illegal logging. Unlike previous deployments of single-shot games for infrastructure protection, green security games are repeated games where security agencies must act against adversaries that repeatedly engage in illegal activities, and where adversaries act with more of a limited surveillance and limited ability to plan each activity. After providing a quick overview of early work in security games, I will discuss our experience testing green security game software in protected areas, and discuss key research challenges in scaling up to large-scale problems, in modeling bounded rationality of human adversaries and machine learning in green security games.

Speaker Details

Milind Tambe is Helen N. and Emmett H. Jones Professor in Engineering at the University of Southern California(USC). He is a fellow of AAAI and ACM, as well as recipient of the ACM/SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award, Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland security award, the INFORMS Wagner prize for excellence in Operations Research practice, the Rist Prize of the Military Operations Research Society, IBM Faculty Award, Okawa foundation faculty research award, RoboCup scientific challenge award, and other local awards such as the Orange County Engineering Council Outstanding Project Achievement Award, USC Associates award for creativity in research and USC Viterbi use-inspired research award. Prof. Tambe has contributed several foundational papers in agents and multiagent systems; this includes areas of multiagent teamwork, distributed constraint optimization (DCOP) and security games. For this research, he has received the “influential paper award” from the International Foundation for Agents and Multiagent Systems(IFAAMAS), as well as with his research group, best paper awards at conferences such as AAMAS, IVA and IJCAI. In addition, the real-world deployments of the ”security games” framework and algorithms pioneered by Prof. Tambe and his research group has led them to receive the US Coast Guard Meritorious Team Commendation from the Commandant, US Coast Guard First District’s Operational Excellence Award, Certificate of Appreciation from the US Federal Air Marshals Service and special commendation given by the Los Angeles World Airports police from the city of Los Angeles. For his teaching and service, Prof. Tambe has received the USC Steven B. Sample Teaching and Mentoring award and the ACM recognition of service award. Recently, he co-founded a company based on his research, ARMORWAY, where he serves as the director of research. Prof. Tambe received his Ph.D. from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.