Motivated by the NEXUS program between the US-Canada border, we consider a security screening process where travelers such as cars and trucks are assigned to a selectee or nonselectee lane depending on whether their threat values exceed a threshold level. The goal is to design a two-tier system to maximize the probability of detecting a threat subject to the waiting time and operating cost constraints. We formulate the problem as an optimization program, in which the objective function and some variables can be estimated only by simulation. We then develop algorithms to compute the global optimum, within a proposed bounding region, for the Markovian and non-Markovian systems, respectively. The convergence analysis and extensive numerical results are provided to demonstrate the algorithms' promising performance.

中文翻译：

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受预算和等待时间限制的安检系统的仿真优化

受美国与加拿大边境之间的 NEXUS 计划的启发，我们考虑了一个安全检查过程，在该过程中，汽车和卡车等旅客被分配到选定或非选定车道，具体取决于他们的威胁值是否超过阈值水平。目标是设计一个两层系统，在等待时间和运营成本约束下，最大限度地提高检测威胁的概率。我们将问题表述为一个优化程序，其中目标函数和一些变量只能通过模拟来估计。然后，我们开发算法来分别为马尔可夫和非马尔可夫系统在建议的边界区域内计算全局最优值。提供了收敛分析和广泛的数值结果来证明算法的有前途的性能。