Analysing Temporal Relations – Beyond Windows, Frames and Predicates

This article proposes an approach to rely on the standard operators of relational algebra (including grouping and ag- gregation) for processing complex event without requiring window specifications. In this way the approach can pro- cess complex event queries of the kind encountered in appli- cations such as emergency management in metro networks. This article presents Temporal Stream Algebra (TSA) which combines the operators of relational algebra with an analy- sis of temporal relations at compile time. This analysis de- termines which relational algebra queries can be evaluated against data streams, i. e. the analysis is able to distinguish valid from invalid stream queries. Furthermore the analysis derives functions similar to the pass, propagation and keep invariants in Tucker's et al. \Exploiting Punctuation Seman- tics in Continuous Data Streams". These functions enable the incremental evaluation of TSA queries, the propagation of punctuations, and garbage collection. The evaluation of TSA queries combines bulk-wise and out-of-order processing which makes it tolerant to workload bursts as they typically occur in emergency management. The approach has been conceived for efficiently processing complex event queries on top of a relational database system. It has been deployed and tested on MonetDB

Temporal Stream Algebra

Data stream management systems (DSMS) so far focus on event queries and hardly consider combined queries to both data from event streams and from a database. However, applications like emergency management require combined data stream and database queries. Further requirements are the simultaneous use of multiple timestamps after different time lines and semantics, expressive temporal relations between multiple time-stamps and exible negation, grouping and aggregation which can be controlled, i. e. started and stopped, by events and are not limited to fixed-size time windows. Current DSMS hardly address these requirements. This article proposes Temporal Stream Algebra (TSA) so as to meet the afore mentioned requirements. Temporal streams are a common abstraction of data streams and data- base relations; the operators of TSA are generalizations of the usual operators of Relational Algebra. A in-depth 'analysis of temporal relations guarantees that valid TSA expressions are non-blocking, i. e. can be evaluated incrementally. In this respect TSA differs significantly from previous algebraic approaches which use specialized operators to prevent blocking expressions on a "syntactical" level

Dura

The reactive event processing language, that is developed in the context of this project, has been called DEAL in previous documents. When we chose this name for our language it has not been used by other authors working in the same research area (complex event processing). However, in the meantime it appears in publications of other authors and because we have not used the name in publications yet we cannot claim that we were the first to use it. In order to avoid ambiguities and name conflicts in future publications we decided to rename our language to Dura which stands for “Declarative uniform reactive event processing language”. Therefore the title of this deliverable has been updated to “Dura – Concepts and Examples”

Reactive Rules for Emergency Management

The goal of the following survey on Event-Condition-Action (ECA) Rules is to come to a common understanding and intuition on this topic within EMILI. Thus it does not give an academic overview on Event-Condition-Action Rules which would be valuable for computer scientists only. Instead the survey tries to introduce Event-Condition-Action Rules and their use for emergency management based on real-life examples from the use-cases identified in Deliverable 3.1. In this way we hope to address both, computer scientists and security experts, by showing how the Event-Condition-Action Rule technology can help to solve security issues in emergency management. The survey incorporates information from other work packages, particularly from Deliverable D3.1 and its Annexes, D4.1, D2.1 and D6.2 wherever possible

A Survey on IT-Techniques for a Dynamic Emergency Management in Large Infrastructures

This deliverable is a survey on the IT techniques that are relevant to the three use cases of the project EMILI. It describes the state-of-the-art in four complementary IT areas: Data cleansing, supervisory control and data acquisition, wireless sensor networks and complex event processing. Even though the deliverable’s authors have tried to avoid a too technical language and have tried to explain every concept referred to, the deliverable might seem rather technical to readers so far little familiar with the techniques it describes

Diagnostic issues and capabilities in 48 isolation facilities in 16 European countries: data from EuroNHID surveys

Background: Highly infectious diseases (HIDs) are defined as being transmissible from person to person, causing life-threatening illnesses and presenting a serious public health hazard. The sampling, handling and transport of specimens from patients with HIDs present specific bio-safety concerns. Findings The European Network for HID project aimed to record, in a cross-sectional study, the infection control capabilities of referral centers for HIDs across Europe and assesses the level of achievement to previously published guidelines. In this paper, we report the current diagnostic capabilities and bio-safety measures applied to diagnostic procedures in these referral centers. Overall, 48 isolation facilities in 16 European countries were evaluated. Although 81% of these referral centers are located near a biosafety level 3 laboratory, 11% and 31% of them still performed their microbiological and routine diagnostic analyses, respectively, without bio-safety measures. Conclusions: The discrepancies among the referral centers surveyed between the level of practices and the European Network of Infectious Diseases (EUNID) recommendations have multiple reasons of which the interest of the individuals in charge and the investment they put in preparedness to emerging outbreaks. Despite the fact that the less prepared centers can improve by just updating their practice and policies any support to help them to achieve an acceptable level of biosecurity is welcome

An agent-based modelling approach to evaluate factors influencing bioenergy crop adoption in north-east Scotland

Acknowledgements This work was funded through a NERC-CASE studentship with the University of Aberdeen and the James Hutton Institute (JHI). The authors wish to thank those farmers who participated in the survey and provided data for the research, and BioSS (JHI – Aberdeen) for advising on statistical analysis.Peer reviewedPublisher PD