Sequential Decision Making Algorithms for Port of Entry Inspection: Overcoming Computational Challenges

Following work of Stroud and Saeger and Anand et al., we formulate a port of entry inspection sequencing task as a problem of finding an optimal binary decision tree for an appropriate Boolean decision function. We report on new algorithms that are more efficient computationally than those presented by Stroud and Saeger and Anand et al. We achieve these efficiencies through a combination of specific numerical methods for finding optimal thresholds for sensor functions and a novel binary decision tree search algorithm that operates on a space of potentially acceptable binary decision trees.