Using Decision Analysis in Physical Protection Planning

The physical protection planner is faced with a myriad of decisions to make in developing a security system that will meet his goals. Goal oriented considerations such as threat definition, acts to be precluded, and corporate or public policy weigh heavily upon design decisions. Dealing with trade-offs between seemingly unrelated security components is a basic design challenge. Often there is no way to quantitatively deal with such factors in arriving at an optimum security design. Decision analysis techniques such as the Analytical Hierarchy Process offer the potential for structuring expert judgment in examining complex design problems such as these. The easily - understood process allows the security planner to rank various approaches to a given security problem, while ensuring adequate attention to meeting overall protection goals. An example application will be described, wherein various physical security system configurations will be evaluated for an application where stated policy (in the form of defined threat statement) and site peculiarities will be key decision factors.