A game theory approach to identify alternative regulatory frameworks for hazardous materials routing

Hazardous materials (hazmat) transportation vehicles can be viewed as potential targets for terrorist attack because of the serious health and environmental risk produced by hazmat release. Some effective approaches in attack and disaster preparation are to restrict the transportation of hazmat on some high risk links, design robust routing schemes that direct hazmat vehicles through minimal risk paths, and to identify vulnerable links where a terrorist attack is likely to occur. In this paper, we apply a non-zero sum game theoretic framework between a hazmat router and terrorist to determine routing plans that maximize a hazmat carrier's payoff (utility) and to identify vulnerable links requiring additional defense against terrorist attack.