School of Engineering and Information Technology

Any significant decision making process in the areas of air and land transport involves dealing with many complexities including spatial interactions, temporal changes, interdependencies between system components and risk and uncertainties associated with decision choices. In this project we attempt to capture part of these complexities using an evolutionary game theoretic framework. At the heart of this framework is a game called InterDependent Security (IDS). In IDS games players opt between investing or not investing in securing themselves against possible losses in case of a bad event. In the spatial model, agents are placed in a social network structure where they interact among their respective neighbourhoods. The agents evolve their behaviours over time by adopting the strategies of their neighbours according to certain update rules. Several different models of IDS games have been studied on a variety of network structures under this project using computer simulations including the deterministic and stochastic models. The empirical analysis and statistical modelling of the game dynamics have provided important insights into the rational behaviour of agents making decisions under spatiotemporal interdependent environments.