Scientific Support for the Decision Making in the Security Sector: v. 12 (NATO Science for Peace and Security Series D: Information and Communication Security) - Hardcover

Today's security environment is characterized by deep uncertainty. Threats are being posed not only by adversary (political) forces but may also come from natural challenges (be it energy, water, ecology or whatever). The types of operations that our civil security and military forces find themselves in today comprise a wide variety of tasks. The success criteria for these operations are a safe/secure environment for local population and stable conditions for state building rather than hit-kill ratio's against adversaries - the criteria are soft and the many actors involved may have divergent if not opposing objectives. And where actors intentionally share common objectives, they come from different cultural and organizational backgrounds, and their systems and modus operandi (doctrine) have loose or no connectivity. Under these complex and uncertain conditions decision making is a challenging process.This publication reflects the initial state of a dialogue between specialists in security and specialists in mathematics, computer and information sciences on security topics. Papers included in this volume are naturally subdivided into four parts showing the wide future perspective for synthesis between science and security: Planning for Security; Mathematical, Computer and Information Sciences Methods for Security; Environmental Security; and Dynamic Optimization for Security.