Decision procedures for safeguards systems

Safeguards problems arise when a safeguards authority has to decide whether an inspectee has behaved legally according to a formal agreement. Such a decision is made on the basis of observations of random variables and uses a well-defined procedure which may or may not be announced. Whereas in the latter case of no announcement, the inspectee will behave in equilibrium illegally with positive probability; in the former case action will be taken legally with certainty: the inspectee will be deterred from illegal behavior by means of inspector leadership procedure. There are many applications of the general decision theoretical formalism available for the treatment of these problems. Since, however, most work has been performed for nuclear material safeguards, this application-together with its principles of material accountancy and data verification-is presented in somewhat more detail. It is typical of these problems that their solution requires an interesting interaction of game theoretical and statistical methods.