Towards Process Models for Disaster Response

Dirk Fahland and Heiko Woith. Towards Process Models for Disaster Response. In A.t. Hofstede M. de Leoni, S. Dustdar, editor, Process Management for Highly Dynamic and Pervasive Scenarios, 1st International Workshop, PM4HDPS'08, co-located with 6th International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM'08), Milan, Italy, September 2008. Note: Accepted, Springer publication to appear.

Authors

  • Dirk Fahland1)

  • Heiko Woith

Abstract

In the immediate aftermath of a disaster routine processes, even if specifically designed for such a situation, are not enacted blindly. Actions and processes rather adapt their behavior based on observations and available information. Attempts to support these processes by technology rely on process models that faithfully capture process execution and adaptation. Based on experiences from actual disaster response settings, we propose to specify an adaptive process as a set of scenarios using a Petri net syntax. Our operational model provides an adaptation operator that synthesizes and adapts the system behavior at run-time based on the given scenarios. An example illustrates our approach.

Case Study/Experimental Results

The example that is described in the paper and was presented at the workshop can be opened and executed with Greta as described in the Quick introduction. You can download the example files used in this paper.

Referenced Tools

  1. Greta (for modeling and executing adaptive processes)

BibTex

@INPROCEEDINGS{FahlandW_2008_Response,

author = {Dirk Fahland and Heiko Woith},

title = {Towards Process Models for Disaster Response},

booktitle = {Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Process Management for Highly Dynamic and Pervasive Scenarios (PM4HDPS), co-located with 6th International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM'08)},

year = {2008},

editor = {M. de Leoni, S. Dustdar, A.t. Hofstede},

address = {Milan, Italy},

month = {September},

note = {Accepted, Springer publication to appear},

abstract = {In the immediate aftermath of a disaster routine processes, even if specifically designed for such a situation, are not enacted blindly. Actions and processes rather adapt their behavior based on observations and available information. Attempts to support these processes by technology rely on process models that faithfully capture process execution and adaptation. Based on experiences from actual disaster response settings, we propose to specify an adaptive process as a set of scenarios using a Petri net syntax. Our operational model provides an adaptation operator that synthesizes and adapts the system behavior at run-time based on the given scenarios. An example illustrates our approach.},

pdf = {http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~fahland/docs/fahlandW08_response.pdf},

keywords = {Adaptive/Flexible Workflows, Szenario-basierte Modelle, Petrinetze}

}

1) Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Informatik, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin