Security from chaos

Safety in numbers

Canine car search. Click here for more information.

There’s safety (and security) in numbers … especially when those numbers are random. That’s the lesson learned from a DHS-sponsored research project out of the University of Southern California (USC). The research is already helping to beef up security at LAX airport in Los Angeles, and it could soon be used across the country to predict and minimize risk.

Here’s how it works: Computer software records the locations of routine, random vehicle checkpoints and canine searches at the airport. Police then provide data on possible terrorist targets and their relative importance. These data may change from one day to the next, or if there have been any security breaches or suspicious activity.

Dr. Milind Tambe is a professor of computer science at University of Southern California. Click here for more information.

The computer runs, and—voilà—police get a model of where to go, and when. The software comes up with random decisions that are based on calculated probabilities of a terrorist attack at those locations, using mathematical algorithms.

The result: Security with airtight unpredictability. With the software, it’s extremely difficult to predict police operations.

“What the airport was doing before was not truly statistically random; it was simply mixing things up,” said computer science professor Milind Tambe. “What they have now is systematized, true randomization.”