Defender–attacker–operator: Tri-level game-theoretic interdiction analysis of urban water distribution networks

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to advance the field of network interdiction analysis by introducing an application to the urban water distribution networks (WDNs), deploying protective resources against intentional attacks. The resource allocation problem for urban water supply systems is considered as a three-player (i.e., defender–attacker–operator) game, in which the attacker aims to maximize disruption impacts via interdicting water plants in the network, the defender aims to minimize the worst-case disruption impacts achieved by the attacker while the system operators fulfill the water demand in the residual urban water supply network. Considering the operating characteristics of the water supply network, we adopted the method of hydraulic analysis in the third level to obtain its reliability, and use this as the game equilibrium index of the first two levels. An effective modified variable neighborhood search method is devised to obtain the solution to the game. Finally, a case study was conducted based on the data of water supply network of a certain city in China to evaluate the effectiveness of protection resources against intentional attacks.