CARVER matrix

The CARVER matrix was developed by the United States Army Special Forces during the Vietnam War.

CARVER is an acronym that stands for Criticality, Accessibility, Recuperability, Vulnerability, Effect and Recognizability and is a system to identify and rank specific targets so that attack resources can be efficiently used.

CARVER was developed in World War II by the OSS for the French field agents as a simple, uniformly and somewhat quantifiable means of selecting targets for possible interdiction.

[3][4][5] In the offensive, employing the Carver matrix can help identify targets that are vulnerable to attack and for defensive purposes the Carver matrix can indicate "High Risk" targets that require additional security assets allotted to them to prevent the degradation of said assets via enemy assault or terrorist action .

In the book Unleash the Warrior Within, Richard Machowicz identified that for most situations in life, simply grading one's choices by Criticality & Effect-on-goal/happiness is enough: one needn't do the entire matrix, as these 2 elements are the most significant.