Adversarial risk analysis: An overview

Adversarial risk analysis (ARA) is a relatively new area of research that informs decision-making when facing intelligent opponents and uncertain outcomes. It is a decision-theoretic alternative to game theory. ARA enables an analyst to express her Bayesian beliefs about an opponent's utilities, capabilities, probabilities, and the type of strategic calculations that the opponent is using to make his decision. Within that framework, the analyst then solves the problem from the perspective of the opponent. This calculation produces a distribution over the actions of the opponent that permits the analyst to maximize her expected utility. This review covers conceptual, modeling, computational, and applied issues in ARA as well as interesting open research issues. This article is categorized under: Statistical and Graphical Methods of Data Analysis > Bayesian Methods and Theory Applications of Computational Statistics > Defense and National Security.

Duke Scholars

Author David L. Banks Statistical Science