A systematic review on the application of security game to strategic assets protection

Over the past two decades, especially after the events of September 11, 2001, the security game research area has been at the center of attention of researchers, and the scientific publications in this area have grown increasingly. The present study is done to examine the situation and science mapping of publications in security game research area, especially in the field of engineering,  and furthermore, intends to create an insight into this field for future research. The statistical population of this study is the journal papers written in English that have been published in the Scopus Scientific Database. In this study, for the first time in the field of systematic reviewing the security game literature, a bibliometric analysis approach has been used, adopting Bibexcel and Gephi software. Analytical results of the subject of co-citation network of highly cited references show that the problem of optimization of defensive resource allocation to the infrastructures and information and communication security are the main subject areas, which have been addressed in the examined papers. This suggests that, given the wide range of different types of strategic assets exposed to different types of threats, there is now much potential to address the security game in the field of engineering. Finally, after reviewing the content of the first cluster’s papers, which deals with the allocation optimization of defensive resources based on game theory approach, some suggestions for future research on the problem in the field of engineering are presented.