Methodology for assessing the functional effectiveness of georadars as a means of searching for subsurface smuggling across the state border

Abstract

The results of the analysis of the use of georadars in the State Border Service of Ukraine have shown, that illegal activities at the state border, namely the use of pipelines for pumping fuel and lubricants, alcohol and tunnels for moving smuggling are quite problematic under the ground. The low efficiency of the use of georadars to search for means of subsurface smuggling across the state border is primarily explained by the inability of the used samples of georadars to detect this type of offense. There is a need to select more effective samples of georadars to find means of subsurface smuggling across the state border. To this end, using the method of expert assessments, a method for evaluating the functional efficiency of land-based georadars search facilities for contraband across the state border has been developed. The greatest attention was paid to determining the size of the expert group. The problem of forming the composition of the expert working group is one of the most difficult and at the same time the most responsible tasks of the method оf peer review. There are several approaches to forming the optimal number of experts – formal and informal. The method of confidence intervals of the theory of probabilities is used in the labor, to establish the relationship between the size of the expert group, the number of characteristics of the georadar and the confidence probability to the results of the ranking of characteristics. It was found that: as the number of georadars characteristics increases, the requirements for the probability of erroneously rendering ranks of the radar characteristics increase, its absolute value decreases; an increase in the number of georadars characteristics leads to the need to increase the number of experts to ensure that the upper bound on the likelihood of erroneously assigning ranks to the characteristics of the georadars are allowed; the size of the expert group is almost independent of the increase in the number of characteristics of the georadars, starting with an estimate of 10 characteristics for a certain value of confidence. It is reasonable to determine the minimum composition of a panel of experts at the level of 3-5 people, who provide a level of confidence in the ranking results of 0.95-0.99 regardless of the number of characteristics that are ranked. New in the formation of the expert group is the need to implement the following provisions: determine the number of characteristics of the georadar to be ranked; requirements for the credibility of performance ranking results are established; the number of experts, who are competent in assessing the effectiveness of georadars is determined using a probabilistic approach. In general, the structure of the method of assessing the functional efficiency of the georadars includes: forming the composition of the working group of experts, drafting the content of questionnaires, selecting a group of significant characteristics of the georadars from the entire set, processing the results of the survey using a known mathematical estimation apparatus, automation of calculations.