Vulnerability assessment of a food supply chain to an intentional attack

Our objective is to develop an approach for quantifying the vulnerability of a food product supply chain that may be used by an intelligent adversary to deliver a chemical or biological agent. The approach is intended to create control strategies that seek to ensure a high level of system productivity while mitigating risk. We have developed a supply chain process model that determines the consequence of a given attack, in terms of the number of contaminated containers exiting the production system. An attacker-defender sequential game model is also developed to determine the likelihood that the system is successfully attacked as a function of how the targets are protected in the presence of an intelligent attacker. The combined model determines the expected impact of a successful attack and provides near optimal control strategies. A case study is built for the liquid egg production industry, which compares the productivity and vulnerability of two alternative supply chain designs.