Scheduling policies for an antiterrorist surveillance system

This article concerns scheduling policies in a surveillance system aimed at detecting a terrorist attack in time. Terrorist suspects arriving at a public area are subject to continuous monitoring, while a surveillance team takes their biometric signatures and compares them with records stored in a terrorist database. Because the surveillance team can screen only one terrorist suspect at a time, the team faces a dynamic scheduling problem among the suspects. We build a model consisting of an M/G/1 queue with two types of customers—red and white—to study this problem. Both types of customers are impatient but the reneging time distributions are different. The server only receives a reward by serving a red customer and can use the time a customer has spent in the queue to deduce its likely type. In a few special cases, a simple service rule—such as first‐come‐first‐serve—is optimal. We explain why the problem is in general difficult and we develop a heuristic policy motivated by the fact that terrorist attacks tend to be rare events. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2009     

模糊故障树分析方法在机场环境安全中的应用

采用故障树分析法,对引起鸟击飞机的各个因素进行系统分析,并建立了故障树.通过定性分析,可得引起顶事件发生的2580个最小割集.采用专家判断和模糊集理论相结合的方法,评估故障树底事件发生概率的模糊性,并以"垃圾堆对鸟的吸引"这一底事件为例,计算出其模糊失效率.通过定量分析,计算出顶事件的发生概率为0.00241,同时可计算各底事件的重要度.     

略论警卫人员团队精神的培养

作为担负保护党和国家领导人及重要目标安全的警卫部队,亟须加强官兵团队精神的培养。培养的主要原则和方法是增强团队的凝聚力、激发成员的参与激情、促进每一成员的成长、树立全局意识。     

运用人民战争思想营造良好警卫环境

人民战争思想是战争年代我军战胜日本帝国主义和国民党反动派的强大思想武器,和平建设时期的警卫工作同样需要运用人民战争思想营造良好的警卫环境,为完成繁重的警卫任务创造条件。因此,在全社会构建大警卫格局具有极其重要的意义。     

当代革命军人核心价值观在警卫部队的实践

实践当代革命军人核心价值观是当前公安警卫部队思想政治建设的根本任务。正确把握当代革命军人核心价值观的科学内涵及其在警卫部队的具体表现,坚持“以人为本”、“和谐文化”、“依法治军”和“长效机制”的理念,对警卫部队实践当代革命军人核心价值观具有重要意义。     

新时期警卫阵地建设的思考

警卫阵地建设工作是警卫基础工作的重要内容之一,对确保警卫安全,圆满完成警卫任务意义重大。因此,必须采取切实措施,加强警卫阵地建设。     

Fencing the bear? Explaining US foreign policy towards Russian interventions

Despite the burgeoning literature on Russia’s renewed power politics, little attention has been paid to the fact that US reactions towards Russia’s military interventions were all but coherent. The USA has chosen weak measures in Georgia in 2008 (shaming) compared to its assertive response in Ukraine in 2014 (sanctions, hard deterrence). This article assesses the explanatory power of neorealist, liberal and constructivist theories for the variation in US reactions towards Russian interventions in Georgia and Ukraine. Our argument is that the constructivist perspective explains the cases best as it highlights the power and communality of normative assessments. The Ukraine crisis was perceived by the USA as a violation of core international norms, especially the non-use of force and the principle of territorial integrity. Relevant international norm carriers shared this assessment of the conflict. In contrast, the perception of the Georgian war centred on the issue of democracy promotion. While democracy is an important aim of US foreign policy, it does not summon the same normative importance as general principles of international law. Furthermore, the perception of the Georgian war remained contested among Western allies, which decreased the communality of the normative assessment.     

The making of the EU Global Strategy

This article traces the evolution of the EU strategic reflection which culminated in the publication of the EU Global Strategy (EUGS) in June 2016. It explains the choices made by EU High Representative Federica Mogherini over this time period—including both the initial strategic assessment and the final EUGS. It provides a behind the scenes view on the players, the organization and the methods of work used to produce a strategic vision for the EU’s role in the world.     

Hiding Death: Contextualizing the Dover Ban

Following the terrorist attacks against the US in 2001, the Bush administration reaffirmed the Dover ban, the policy that prohibited press coverage of military coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base from conflicts abroad. Conventional wisdom holds that the Bush administration enforced the ban in the hope of maintaining public support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This understanding, though, is incomplete. If the Dover ban were enforced only in response to eroding public opinion, then other coalition states would have responded likewise to this shared incentive. I argue instead that maintaining public support is only one factor among many that led the US to uphold this policy. In addition to considering the influence of factors such as perceived media bias and casualty aversion, I focus on necropolitics and the related impetus for governments to regulate the observation of death. Through this interpretation, part of the American response to the involuntary loss of sovereignty on 9/11 was to exercise control over the observation of death by enforcing the Dover ban. Through comparing the press policies of the US, the UK, and Canada, I show that the necropolitical blow to sovereignty that only the US experienced triggered a repressive policy that only the US was able to maintain.     

Defining quantitative criteria for the physical protection system effectiveness of nuclear facilities

The article is devoted to problems of defining quantitative criteria for the physical protection system (PPS) effectiveness of nuclear facilities. The article briefly describes the scheme of the PPS development used in the nuclear industry in Russia, gives a review of existing approaches to defining the minimal acceptable value of the system's effectiveness, and reveals advantages and disadvantages of the approaches. The article describes in detail an approach based on facility categorization by potential losses and a technique of defining the minimal acceptable value of the PPS effectiveness developed on its base.