A Security Game Model for Environment Protection in the Presence of an Alarm System

We propose, to the best of our knowledge, the first Security Game where a Defender is supported by a spatially uncertain alarm system which non–deterministically generates signals once a target is under attack. Spatial uncertainty is common when securing large environments, e.g., for wildlife protection. We show that finding the equilibrium for this game is \(\mathcal {FNP}\)–hard even in the zero–sum case and we provide both an exact algorithm and a heuristic algorithm to deal with it. Without false positives and missed detections, the best patrolling strategy reduces to stay in a place, wait for a signal, and respond to it at best. This strategy is optimal even with non–negligible missed detection rates.