Optimal search on water pollution accident source in discrete spaces

When the pollution accidents take place in the river basin, it is very important and necessary to find out the accidental sources of pollution , so that effective measures can be taken to reduce the pollution. But because of the lack of monitoring efforts and the secluded source, very little about the accidental sources of pollution is known to searcher and it is very hard to find the accidental sources accurately and quickly. Based on the theory of optimal search, an optimal search model of detecting the water pollution accident source with discrete efforts is proposed. The optimal solution to the situation is found and the expected time to find the targets can be computed before the beginning of search.. Results have shown that the plans can not only maximize the probability of detecting the water pollution accident source subject to a fixed time but also minimize the expected cost of finding the target.