Optimal Investigating Search Plan for Contacts in Two-Stage Search

In the previous sections, we have investigated the optimal search plan in various search situations without considering the possibility of false contacts. In this chapter, a noisy search model will be dealt with. In the noisy search, the detection device of the searcher sometimes gives false alarms of the target, and hence the second stage of search is needed to ascertain whether the detection is true or not. The first- and the second-stage search are called the broad search and the investigating search, respectively.