Checking process compliance on the basis of uncertain event-to-activity mappings

Abstract

A crucial requirement for compliance checking techniques is that observed behavior, captured in event traces, can be mapped to the process models that specify allowed behavior. Without a mapping, it is not possible to determine if observed behavior is compliant or not. A considerable problem in this regard is that establishing a mapping between events and process model activities is an inherently uncertain task. Since the use of a particular mapping directly influences the compliance of a trace to a specification, this uncertainty represents a major issue for compliance checking. To overcome this issue, we introduce a probabilistic compliance checking method that can deal with uncertain mappings. Our method avoids the need to select a single mapping, but rather works on a spectrum of possible mappings. A quantitative evaluation demonstrates that our method can be applied on a considerable number of real-world processes where traditional compliance checking methods fail.