Decision Principles for Routing Strategies: Games against Nature and Demons

Abstract

In this paper we firstly review general decision principles under uncertainty and apply them to route choice decisions. Risk-averse behaviour leads to the description of route choice a game. The difference between games against demons and nature are pointed out by distinguishing when disruptions on the chosen route might be related to the traveller’s behaviour or not. It is argued that in many cases the traveller has some (limited) information about the connection between attack likelihood and routing, meaning that pure games against demons are rare for practical applications. The paper therefore extends the game theoretic literature on route choice by formulating a generalised model. The model allows for games against multiple demons and consideration that some links might be safer than others. It is shown that games against nature and the Bell (2007) model can be derived as limiting cases. Results are illustrated with an example network.