The Theory of Search Games and Rendezvous

Steve Alpern

• 31 december 2002
• 9780792374688

Samenvatting:

Book I considers the zero-sum game that results when the target (here called the Hider) does not want to be found. In this case the Searcher and the Hider can be thought of as a team of agents (simply called Player I and Player II) with identical aims, and the coordination problem they jointly face is called the Rendezvous Search Problem.



Search Theory is one of the classic methodological disciplines in operations research and applied mathematics. It deals with the problem faced by a searcher who wishes to minimize the time required to find a hidden object. Traditionally, the target of the search is assigned to have no motives of its own and is either stationary (for example, oil, network problems, and so on) or its motion is determined stochastically by known rules (financial markets, scheduling, genetics, and so on). This text widens the dimensions to the classical problem with the addition of an independent player of equal status to the searcher, who cares about being found or not being found. These multiple motives of searcher and hider are analytically and mathematically considered the book's two foci: Search Games (Book I) and Rendezvous Theory (Book II). Shmuel Gal's work on Search Games (Gal, 1980) stimulated considerable research in a variety of fields including Computer Science, Engineering, Biology, and Economics. New material is covered in both Search Games (Book I) and Rendezvous Theory (Book II). The book examines a whole variety of configurations of theory and problems that arise from these two aspects of the analysis - resulting in a penetrating state-of-the-art treatment of this highly useful mathematical and analytical tool.