Where To Locate Tethered Aerostats for an Effective Surveillance System: A Case Study on Southern Turkey

Abstract

Due to its geostrategic position, security problems such as terrorism and illegal immigrationhave been experienced in southern Turkey so far. While Turkey uses UAVs to prevent thethreats that may come from this region, National Defense Ministry is planning to use alternativetechnologies such as Tethered Aerostats. Because of the high investment cost, a considerableplanning period is required before implementation of these systems. In this study; consideringproject budget, camera sensor capabilities, geographical analysis data and appropriatenessparameters of candidate locations, three scenarios are developed for the site selection problemof Aerostats on southern Turkey. Goal Programming approach including Set CoveringAlgorithm and fuzzy-TOPSIS is applied and the results are tested with Viewshed Analysis ofGIS. The study results present important recommendations for the probable success of TAs insouthern Turkey.