Explainable and Resource-Efficient Stream Processing Through Provenance and Scheduling

In our era of big data, information is captured at unprecedented volumes and velocities, with technologies such as Cyber-Physical Systems making quick decisions based on the processing of streaming, unbounded datasets. In such scenarios, it can be beneficial to process the data in an online manner, using the stream processing paradigm implemented by Stream Processing Engines (SPEs). While SPEs enable high-throughput, low-latency analysis, they are faced with challenges connected to evolving deployment scenarios, like the increasing use of heterogeneous, resource-constrained edge devices together with cloud resources and the increasing user expectations for usability, control, and resource-efficiency, on par with features provided by traditional databases.This thesis tackles open challenges regarding making stream processing more user-friendly, customizable, and resource-efficient. The first part outlines our work, providing high-level background information, descriptions of the research problems, and our contributions. The second part presents our three state-of-the-art frameworks for explainable data streaming using data provenance, which can help users of streaming queries to identify important data points, explain unexpected behaviors, and aid query understanding and debugging. (A) GeneaLog provides backward provenance allowing users to identify the inputs that contributed to the generation of each output of a streaming query. (B) Ananke is the first framework to provide a duplicate-free graph of live forward provenance, enabling easy bidirectional tracing of input-output relationships in streaming queries and identifying data points that have finished contributing to results. (C) Erebus is the first framework that allows users to define expectations about the results of a streaming query, validating whether these expectations are met or providing explanations in the form of why-not provenance otherwise. The third part presents techniques for execution efficiency through custom scheduling, introducing our state-of-the-art scheduling frameworks that control resource allocation and achieve user-defined performance goals. (D) Haren is an SPE-agnostic user-level scheduler that can efficiently enforce user-defined scheduling policies. (E) Lachesis is a standalone scheduling middleware that requires no changes to SPEs but, instead, directly guides the scheduling decisions of the underlying Operating System. Our extensive evaluations using real-world SPEs and workloads show that our work significantly improves over the state-of-the-art while introducing only small performance overheads

ORACLES ON FAULTS: A PROBABLE LOCATION OF A “LOST” ORACLE OF APOLLO NEAR OROVIAI (NORTHERN EUBOEA ISLAND, GREECE) VIEWED IN ITS GEOLOGICAL AND GEOMORPHOLOGICAL CONTEXT

At a newly discovered archaeological site at Aghios Taxiarches in Northern Euboea, two votive inscribed stelae were found in 2001 together with hellenistic pottery next to ancient wall ruins on a steep and high rocky slope. Based on the inscriptions and the geographical location of the site we propose the hypothesis that this is quite probably the spot where the oracle of “Apollo Selinountios” (mentioned by Strabo) would stand in antiquity. The wall ruins of the site are found on a very steep bedrock escarpment of an active fault zone, next to a hanging valley, a high waterfall and a cave. The geomorphological and geological environment of the site is linked directly to the regional geodynamical context of Central Greece, a region of tectonic turmoil throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene, characterised by distinct landscapes produced by the activity of active fault zones, intense seismicity, and in part, volcanism and hydrothermal activity. The geomorphological and geological similarities of the Ag. Taxiarches site with those of the oracle at Delphi, seem to provide further support to the hypothesis that the former site can well be that of an ancient oracle, given the recently established connections between the geological environment at Delphi and Apollo’s oracle there. Definitive verification of our hypothesis can only be obtained by further, detailed archaeological study, whereas geological/geomorphological, geochemical, and geochronological studies would be necessary to clarify the connection that the cave lying next to the wall remains may had with the site’s function

ORACLES ON FAULTS: A PROBABLE LOCATION OF A “LOST” ORACLE OF APOLLO NEAR OROVIAI (NORTHERN EUBOEA ISLAND, GREECE) VIEWED IN ITS GEOLOGICAL AND GEOMORPHOLOGICAL CONTEXT

At a newly discovered archaeological site at Aghios Taxiarches in Northern Euboea, two votive inscribed stelae were found in 2001 together with hellenistic pottery next to ancient wall ruins on a steep and high rocky slope. Based on the inscriptions and the geographical location of the site we propose the hypothesis that this is quite probably the spot where the oracle of “Apollo Selinountios” (mentioned by Strabo) would stand in antiquity. The wall ruins of the site are found on a very steep bedrock escarpment of an active fault zone, next to a hanging valley, a high waterfall and a cave. The geomorphological and geological environment of the site is linked directly to the regional geodynamical context of Central Greece, a region of tectonic turmoil throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene, characterised by distinct landscapes produced by the activity of active fault zones, intense seismicity, and in part, volcanism and hydrothermal activity. The geomorphological and geological similarities of the Ag. Taxiarches site with those of the oracle at Delphi, seem to provide further support to the hypothesis that the former site can well be that of an ancient oracle, given the recently established connections between the geological environment at Delphi and Apollo’s oracle there. Definitive verification of our hypothesis can only be obtained by further, detailed archaeological study, whereas geological/geomorphological, geochemical, and geochronological studies would be necessary to clarify the connection that the cave lying next to the wall remains may had with the site’s function

Deterministic, Explainable and Resource-Efficient Stream Processing for Cyber-Physical Systems

We are undeniably living in the era of big data, where people and machines generate information at an unprecedented rate. While processing such data can provide immense value, it can prove especially challenging because of the data\u27s Volume, Variety and Velocity. Velocity can be particularly important in environments that need to respond to incoming data in near real-time, such as cyber-physical systems. In such cases, the batch processing paradigm, which requires all data to be persistently stored and available, might not be appropriate. Instead, it can be desirable to perform stream processing, where unbounded datasets of streaming data are processed in an online manner, generating results quickly and thus significantly benefiting applications with strict latency requirements. However, it can be challenging for stream processing to provide the same guarantees and ease-of-use as traditional batch processing systems. This thesis studies ways to alleviate this by introducing techniques that make stream processing more predictable, explainable, and resource-efficient.In the first part of the thesis, we study determinism, which can guarantee predictable and reproducible results in stream processing, regardless of the runtime system characteristics. We present Viper, a module for stream processing frameworks that provides determinism with a minimal performance impact. In the second part, we study fine-grained data provenance, which links each streaming result with the inputs that led to its generation. Fine-grained data provenance can help make stream processing easier to understand and debug. Additionally, it can reduce storage and transmission costs by allowing to maintain only the essential input data. We propose the GeneaLog framework that provides fine-grained data provenance in stream processing with minimal overhead. In the third part of the thesis, we explore scheduling and its use in stream processing for controlling resource allocation and achieving specific performance goals. We develop Haren, a framework that can be integrated into stream processing frameworks, providing custom thread scheduling capabilities. We study Haren\u27s efficiency and its facilities that allow a user to control the resource allocation of a streaming system. We evaluate all three proposed frameworks with relevant streaming use cases from the real-world and illustrate their efficiency and ease-of-use

Geomorphological reconnaissance of the Psathopyrgos and Rion-Patras Fault zones (Achaia, NW Peloponnesus).

Στην εργασία αυτή συζητώνται γεωμορφολογικές παρατηρήσεις κατά μήκος των ενεργών ρηξιγενών ζωνών Ψαθοιτύργου και Ρίου-Πατρών (ΒΑ τμήμα). Οι ρηξιγενείς ζώνες αυτές αντιστοιχούν σε ρηξιγενή μέτωπα περισσότερο ή λιγότερο πολύπλοκης μορφολογίας. Τα γεωμορφολογικά χαρακτηριστικά των μετώπων δίδουν πληροφορίες για την γεωμετρία των ζωνών αυτών, συμπληρωματικές των ήδη υπαρχόντων δεδομένων από γεωλογικές έρευνες. Στοχεύοντας στην αναγνώριση θέσεων δυνητικά κατάλληλων για γεωμορφολογικές και γεωλογικές έρευνες για την εκτίμηση των ρυθμών ολίσθησης ρηγμάτων αυτών των ζωνών κατά το Ολόκαινο, περιγράφονται περιπτώσεις ρηγματωμένων ολοκαινικών γεωμορφών και σχετιζόμενων με αυτές επιφανειακών αποθέσεων. Επι πλέον, συζητώνται τα προβλήματα ανεύρεσης θέσεων κατάλληλων για γεωλογικές/γεωμορφολογικές έρευνες γαι τον χρονικό προσδιορισμό πρόσφατων σεισμικών διαρήξεων (παλαιοσεισμολογία), προβλήματα που οφείλονται τόσο σε ανθρώπινες επεμβάσεις, όσο και σε φυσικές γεωμορφολογικές διεργασίες.In this communication we discuss reconnaissance geomorphological observations along the active Psathopyrgos and Rion-Patras (NE part) fault zones. These fault zones correspond to more or less complex rangefronts, the geomorphic characteristics of which provide hints on the details of the fault zone geometries, adding to the existing geological data in the bibliography. Aiming at the identification of locations suitable or potentially suitable for geomorphological and geological studies for the determination of fault slip rates in the Holocene, we describe cases of faulted Holocene landforms and associated surficial deposits. We also discuss problems involved in finding locations suitable for geological (paleoseismological) studies for the determination of the timing of recent earthquake ruptures, problems due to both man-made and natural causes

Using geomorphic and biological indicators of coastal uplift for the evaluation of paleoseismicity and

The westernmost part of the Gulf of Corinth (Greece) is an area of very fast extension (~15 mm/yr according to geodetic measurements) and active normal faulting, accompanied by intense coastal uplift and high seismicity. This study presents geomorphic and biological evidence of Holocene coastal uplift at the western extremity of the Gulf, where such evidence was previously unknown. Narrow shore platforms (benches) and rare notches occur mainly on Holocene littoral conglomerates of uplifting small fan deltas. They are perhaps the only primary paleoseismic evidence likely to provide information on earthquake recurrence at coastal faults in the specific part of the Rift system, whereas dated marine fauna can provide constraints on average Holocene coastal uplift rate. The types of geomorphic and biological evidence identified are not ideal, and there are limitations and pitfalls involved in their evaluation. In a first approach, 5 uplifted paleoshorelines may be indentified, at 0.4- 0.7, 1.0-1.3, 1.4-1.7, 2.0-2.3 and 2.8-3.4 m a.m.s.l. They probably formed after 1728 or 2250 Cal. B.P. (depending on the marine reservoir correction used in the calibration of measured radiocarbon ages). A most conservative estimate for the average coastal uplift rate during the Late Holocene is 1.6 or 1.9 mm/yr minimum (with different amounts of reservoir correction). Part of the obtained radiocarbon ages of Lithophaga sp. allows for much higher Holocene uplift rates, of the order of 3-4 mm/yr, which cannot be discarded given that similar figures exist in the bibliography on Holocene and Pleistocene uplift at neighbouring areas. They should best be cross-checked by further studies though. That the identified paleoshoreline record corresponds to episodes of coastal uplift only, cannot be demonstrated beyond all doubt by independent evidence, but it appears the most likely interpretation, given the geological and active-tectonic context and, what is known about eustatic sea-level fluctuations in the Mediterranean. Proving that the documented uplifts were abrupt (i.e., arguably coseismic), is equally difficult, but reasonably expected and rather probable. Five earthquakes in the last ca. 2000 yrs on the coastal fault zone responsible for the uplift, compare well with historical seismicity and the results of recent on-fault paleoseismological studies at the nearby Eliki fault zone. Exact amounts of coseismic uplift cannot be determined precisely, unless the rate of uniform ("regional") non-seismic uplift of Northern Peloponnesus at the specific part of the Corinth Rift is somehow constrained

The DEBS 2020 grand challenge

The ACM DEBS 2020 Grand Challenge is the tenth in a series of challenges which seek to provide a common ground and evaluation criteria for a competition aimed at both research and industrial event-based systems. The focus of the ACM DEBS 2020 Grand Challenge is on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM). The goal of the challenge is to detect when appliances contributing to an aggregated stream of voltage and current readings from a smart meter are switched on or off. NILM is leveraged in many contexts, ranging from monitoring of energy consumption to home automation. This paper describes the specifics of the data streams provided in the challenge, as well as the benchmarking platform that supports the testing of the solutions submitted by the participants