Professor Edward Kaplan Appointed to Committee Evaluating Nuclear Detection

Edward H. Kaplan, the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Management Sciences, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Engineering, has been appointed to a new National Research Council committee tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of the Global Nuclear Detection Architecture. This architecture is a multi-layered system of detection technologies, programs, and guidelines designed to enhance the nation's ability to detect and prevent a radiological or nuclear attack.

The Global Nuclear Detection Architecture is a complicated system of systems, and measuring the success of the architecture relative to its individual components, and the effectiveness of additional investments, are challenges. The committee will conduct a study and prepare a report to the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office on quantitative approaches to these problems. In particular, the committee has been asked to develop an overall analysis framework to assess the effectiveness of the Global Nuclear Detection Architecture in terms of its ability to detect, deny, confuse, and deter adversaries. Approaches for exercising this analysis framework will include combinations of modeling/simulation, "red teaming" (acting as an adversary to detect vulnerabilities), and related methods to assess the cost effectiveness of and tradeoffs in Global Nuclear Detection Architecture components.

Kaplan is an expert in operations research, mathematical modeling, and statistics, and studies problems in public policy and management. His current research focuses on the application of operations research to problems in counterterrorism and homeland security. He is a three-time winner of the Koopman Prize of the Military Applications Society of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), most recently for his paper "Terror Queues" (2011).