Virtual Environment for Developing Strategies for Interdicting Terrorists Carrying Dirty Bombs

Strategies for detecting terrorists carrying radioactive material can be evaluated in virtual environments more easily than they can be in the real world. Real scenarios expose personnel to radiation and concomitant dangers. The execution of multiple real-world scenarios – such as catching terrorists in factories, houses and open spaces – is expensive. This paper describes virtual environments for interdicting terrorists carrying radioactive material. The virtual environments are constructed by incorporating the physics of radiation into virtual-world platforms. We explore the relative advantages of a gaming engine (Half-Life 2), a 3D online virtual world (Second Life) and a robot simulator platform (Stage/Player) for developing strategies for interdicting dirty bombers. Preliminary results on implementations of these virtual environments are presented.