Adversarial risk analysis: The Somali pirates case

We show how adversarial risk analysis may cope with a current important security issue in relation with piracy off the Somali coasts. Specifically, we describe how to support the owner of a ship in managing risks from piracy in that area. We illustrate how a sequential defend-attack-defend model can be used to formulate this decision problem and solve it for the ship owner. Our formulation models the pirates' behavior through the analysis of how they could solve their decision problem. ©2012 INFORMS.