Bayesian Stackelberg game model for water supply networks against interdictions with mixed strategies

Abstract

We address a problem of preventing an interdiction on water supply networks by building a Bayesian Stackelberg game model involving stakeholders of a defender and an interdictor. The defender initiates to allocate resource to network components to make a trade-off between network resilience measured by water satisfaction rate and the defender's cost, whereas the interdictor follows to interdict a component with the objectives of maximising the destruction level on the network structure and minimising the interdictor's cost. Specifically, the defender adopts mixed defence strategies, which implies that the interdictor is uncertain of the defender's resource allocation. Moreover, we propose sufficient conditions for the elimination of the dominated defence and interdiction strategies. A decomposed iterative learning algorithm (DILA) and a smallest-depth binary-partition based hierarchical algorithm (SBHA) are developed to reduce the sizes of the defence and interdiction strategy sets, respectively, thus analysing the optimal mixed defence strategies. Finally, a real case study with private information is conducted, thus providing valuable suggestions for the defender's resource allocation against interdictions.

Keywords:

• Bayesian Stackelberg game
• water supply network
• defence
• interdiction
• mixed strategy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is jointly supported by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister's Office, Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE)programme [grant number R-706-001-101-281] and National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71673188].