This book describes opportunities in mission dependency network analysis made possible by advances in optimization methods. Mission dependency networks are increasingly complex, interconnected, and critically important. They may be as physically large as an international logistics system or as small as an embedded network within a car. They may be primarily physical as is a national transportation system or primarily functional as is a complex series of tasks required to achieve a military objective. Many are vulnerable to impairment due to malicious or accidental intent, natural disaster, or the natural failure of their components. Optimizing such systems is difficult. Advances in optimization methods are a great intellectual treasure which has strikingly less public visibility compared to its pervasive impact on people's lives. It has had a long history of improving the design, performance, and effectiveness of operational tasks. Modern algorithms and computers can solve optimization problems over ten orders of magnitude faster than 25 years ago. This opens the door to new analyses which previously could not be imaginable.
This book frames important mission dependency analysis questions and develops a vocabulary and language to start addressing these issues by presenting a body of optimization analysis developed internally at The MITRE Corporation. While it is solution oriented it seeks to push the state-of-the-art techniques to overcome hurdles which the current academic literature cannot directly address. Parts of this book are highly technical and might be understood only by a reader versed in Operations Research. However, this book also seeks to appeal to three different sets of readers:
- a high-level decision maker interested in learning the big picture;
- an applied researcher seeking to refine, extend, or adapt this work to systems of interest to them;
- an operational practitioner interested in applying some of the algorithms or problem formulations while trusting their rigor.
.- Part I Introduction to criticality analysis of mission dependency
networks with functional components.
.- 1.Assessing node criticality from local dependencies.
.- 2.A continuous universal framework for mission dependency networks.
.- 3.A discrete universal framework for mission dependency networks applied
to system identification and critical node analysis.
.- Part II Mission dependency network analysis with physical and functional
components.
.- 4.Disrupting functional pathways having supporting physical systems: An OR
approach.
.- 5.Disrupting functional pathways having supporting physical systems: A BSI
Approach.
.- 6.Traversing a network of physical nodes to attack functional components
of a mission dependency network.
.- Part III Mission dependency network analysis with incomplete
system-of-system knowledge and temporal considerations.
.- 7.Robust mission network analysis: The theory.
.- 8.Robust mission network analysis: The practice.
.- 9.Incorporating time into mission dependency network analysis.
.- Glossary.
Dr. Les Servi is an operations research scientist and former Chief Scientist for Cyber Operations Research at The MITRE Corporation. Earlier, he conducted research at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Bell Laboratories, and GTE Laboratories (now Verizon), and spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scientist at Harvard University and MIT.
His public-service contributions include membership on Defense Science Board task forces on counterinsurgency (20102011) and constrained military operations (2016). During the COVID-19 epidemic, he led the optimization-modeling effort for a multi-tier medical supply chain within the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment (USD(A&S)) Joint Acquisition Task Force. He received a Certificate of Appreciation from U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.
His research record includes five papers with 200+ citations each and 12 patents. He is an INFORMS Fellow (elected 2004), served six years on the INFORMS Board of Directors, and delivered a keynote at the 2023 INFORMS Annual Meeting. Within the Military Operations Research Society (MORS), he served six years on the Board, was elected President in 2024, delivered a keynote address in 2016 and was named a Fellow in 2025.
He has held editorial roles with Operations Research, Management Science, and the INFORMS Journal on Computing, and has served on Ph.D. committees at Harvard, MIT, and Boston University. He earned his Ph.D. in engineering from Harvard University.
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