Abstract:
Every year, poachers kill about 27,000 African elephants-an astounding 8 percent of the population. If current trends continue, these magnificent animals could be gone wi...Show MoreMetadata
Abstract:
Every year, poachers kill about 27,000 African elephants-an astounding 8 percent of the population. If current trends continue, these magnificent animals could be gone within a decade. The solution, of course, is to stop poachers before they strike, but how to do that has long confounded authorities. In protected areas like wildlife preserves, elephants and other endangered animals may roam far and wide, while rangers can patrol only a small area at any time. "It's a two-part problem," explains Milind Tambe, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. "Can you predict where poaching will happen? And can you [target] your patrols so that they're unpredictable, so that the poachers don't know the rangers are coming?"
Published in: IEEE Spectrum ( Volume: 55, Issue: 1, January 2018)