Modelling Defence Planning as a Sequential Decision Problem

Carolyn Chen, Mark Rempel, Kendall Wheaton

2025

Abstract

Defence planning in a nation’s defence organization is a complex process that requires considering hundreds of projects and billions of taxpayer dollars. While a variety of methods, such as integer programming and genetic algorithms, are used in practice to help decision makers select in which projects to invest, their application tends to not account for the fact that these decisions are made sequentially and under uncertainty. In this paper, we present the first steps towards developing a sequential decision model of the Canadian Department of National Defence’s multi-gate Project Approval Process that addressed both issues. Our contributions are twofold. First, using the universal modelling framework for sequential decisions we present a mathematical model that accounts for the sequential nature of project selection, arrival of new projects over time, and uncertainty in future budgets. In addition, we extend this model to account for the uncertainty in how a project’s cost changes over time when its selection is delayed. Second, we demonstrate how these models may be used to compare the effectiveness of three project selection decision policies, namely a ranked list approach, a knapsack approach, and a knapsack approach that reserves a contingency fund for future projects.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Chen C., Rempel M. and Wheaton K. (2025). Modelling Defence Planning as a Sequential Decision Problem. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES; ISBN 978-989-758-732-0, SciTePress, pages 156-164. DOI: 10.5220/0013248200003893

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icores25,
author={Carolyn Chen and Mark Rempel and Kendall Wheaton},
title={Modelling Defence Planning as a Sequential Decision Problem},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES},
year={2025},
pages={156-164},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013248200003893},
isbn={978-989-758-732-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES
TI - Modelling Defence Planning as a Sequential Decision Problem
SN - 978-989-758-732-0
AU - Chen C.
AU - Rempel M.
AU - Wheaton K.
PY - 2025
SP - 156
EP - 164
DO - 10.5220/0013248200003893
PB - SciTePress