Coloured Petri Nets for Chronicle Recognition

An activity is described by a chronicle that expresses relationships between events in a sequence ordered in time. A chronicle language provides a syntax for the different chronicle operators considered. The recognition of chronicles is used in the processing of complex system simulations so as to detect activities or analyse behaviours. This work models formally the chronicle recognition, and coloured Petri nets (CPN) are used to model the recognition of a chronicle within a flow of events. The occurrence of an event to be detected is modelled by the firing of the corresponding transition. We provide coloured Petri nets to model the recognition of chronicles expressed with logical and temporal operators, as well as minimum and maximum time delays. We show how the composition of operators can be modelled by a composition of the coloured subnets associated with the different operators. The algebraic properties of the operators are reflected in the coloured nets. In this work, composition is achieved through place fusion, and a comprehensive modelling is provided, including more delicate issues such as chronicle with repetitions, and the absence of sub-chronicles.