Sensor Management Problems of Nuclear Detection

Terrorist nuclear attack is a potentially devastating threat to homeland security. It is increasingly important to have the capability to intercept illicit nuclear materials entering the country and to monitor for nuclear threats emerging from within. This article describes a variety of approaches to sensor management in a multi-institution project on nuclear detection, which is based at Rutgers University and supported by the US Department of Homeland Security Domestic Nuclear Detection Office in collaboration with the US National Science Foundation. These approaches revolve around formulating the related problems using precise mathematical language and then developing tools of the mathematical sciences to solve them. The article provides an overview and summary of the project. In so doing, it touches on four themes that have emerged as the areas of greatest emphasis in the project: 1) methods to exploit data from radiation sensors and shipping manifests for classification and decision making; 2) ways to optimize sequential decisions in layered inspection processes; 3) detection using a fleet of mobile radiation sensors; and 4) data sampling strategies for nuclear detection.