Optimal resource allocation for anti-terrorism in protecting overpass bridge based on AHP risk assessment model

Terrorist attacks on infrastructures are serious incidents in many countries. Measures to prevent terrorist attacks and minimize the damage are critical in the design of infrastructures. This paper develops an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based risk assessment model to identify the key components of the overpass bridge in terrorist attacks, and prioritizes a variety of possible attack means with multiple criteria. The AHP risk assessment model can be used to not only set the priority of protected components, but also to allocate resources to the most critical protecting methods within a limited budget. An interchange overpass bridge in Beijing, China is analysed to validate the model. The results show that the method is suitable for the optimal resource allocation in the process of the overpass bridge anti-terrorism design, the formulation of a defence strategy and the protection resource allocation scheme for the overpass bridge against a terrorist attack. The method can also be used for dynamic allocating the resources for the overpass bridge under the early warning of terrorist attacks.