Title: Sequential decision making for container inspection
Speaker: Endre Boros, Rutgers University, RUTCOR
Date: Thursday, October 8, 2009; 12:00-1:00pm
Location: DIMACS Center, CoRE Bldg, Room 431, Rutgers University, Busch Campus, Piscataway, NJ
Abstract:
Checking containers entering our country to filter out possible illegal nuclear content is a daunting task, since millions of containers arrive yearly, and since checking takes time and money, which we never have enough.
We consider the problem of optimizing inspection strategies, when using noisy and costly independent sensors. Apparently, linear programming and dynamic programming techniques can be used to provide mathematically optimal results, which improve on "common-sense" solutions by large margins. [Joint research with L. Fedzhora, N. Goldberg, P.B. Kantor, V. Menkov, K. Saeger, P. Stroud, and J. Word.]