Heavenly Mathematics. The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry

Privacy regulations for data can be regarded as a major driver for data sovereignty measures. A specific example for this is the case of event data that is recorded by information systems during the processing of entities in domains such as e-commerce or health care. Since such data, typically available in the form of event log files, contains personalized information on the specific processed entities, it can expose sensitive information that may be traced back to individuals. In recent years, a plethora of methods have been developed to analyse event logs under the umbrella of process mining. However, the impact of privacy regulations on the technical design as well as the organizational application of process mining has been largely neglected. This paper set out to develop a protection model for event data privacy which applies the well-established notion of differential privacy. Starting from common assumptions about the event logs used in process mining, this paper presents potential privacy leakages and means to protect against them. The paper also shows at which stages of privacy leakages a protection model for event logs should be used. Relying on this understanding, the notion of differential privacy for process discovery methods is instantiated, i.e., algorithms that aim at the construction of a process model from an event log. The general feasibility of our approach is demonstrated by its application to two publicly available real-life events logs.

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Privacy-Preserving Process Mining - Differential Privacy for Event Logs

The construction of business process models has become an important requisite in the analysis and optimization of processes. The success of the analysis and optimization efforts heavily depends on the quality of the models. Therefore, a research domain emerged that studies the process of process modeling. This paper contributes to this research by presenting a way of visualizing the different steps a modeler undertakes to construct a process model, in a so-called process of process modeling Chart. The graphical representation lowers the cognitive efforts to discover properties of the modeling process, which facilitates the research and the development of theory, training and tool support for improving model quality. The paper contains an extensive overview of applications of the tool that demonstrate its usefulness for research and practice and discusses the observations from the visualization in relation to other work. The visualization was evaluated through a qualitative study that confirmed its usefulness and added value compared to the Dotted Chart on which the visualization was inspired.

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/4298861/file/4298894.pdf

A visual analysis of the process of process modeling

This book presents a comprehensive and systematic introduction to transforming process-oriented data into information about the underlying business process, which is essential for all kinds of decision-making. To that end, the authors develop step-by-step models and analytical tools for obtaining high-quality data structured in such a way that complex analytical tools can be applied. The main emphasis is on process mining and data mining techniques and the combination of these methods for process-oriented data. After a general introduction to the business intelligence (BI) process and its constituent tasks in chapter 1, chapter 2 discusses different approaches to modeling in BI applications. Chapter 3 is an overview and provides details of data provisioning, including a section on big data. Chapter 4 tackles data description, visualization, and reporting. Chapter 5 introduces data mining techniques for cross-sectional data. Different techniques for the analysis of temporal data are then detailed in Chapter 6. Subsequently, chapter 7 explains techniques for the analysis of process data, followed by the introduction of analysis techniques for multiple BI perspectives in chapter 8. The book closes with a summary and discussion in chapter 9. Throughout the book, (mostly open source) tools are recommended, described and applied; a more detailed survey on tools can be found in the appendix, and a detailed code for the solutions together with instructions on how to install the software used can be found on the accompanying website. Also, all concepts presented are illustrated and selected examples and exercises are provided. The book is suitable for graduate students in computer science, and the dedicated website with examples and solutions makes the book ideal as a textbook for a first course in business intelligence in computer science or business information systems. Additionally, practitioners and industrial developers who are interested in the concepts behind business intelligence will benefit from the clear explanations and many examples.

Fundamentals of Business Intelligence

Event-based Failure Prediction in Distributed Business Processes

As many users who are charged with process monitoring need to focus mainly on other work while performing monitoring as a secondary task, monitoring systems that purely rely on visual means are often not well suited for this purpose. Sonification, the presentation of data as (non-speech) sound, has proven in several studies that it can help in guiding the user's attention, especially in scenarios where process monitoring is performed in parallel with a different, main task. However, there are several aspects that have not been investigated in this area so far, for example if a continuous soundscape can guide the user's attention better than one that is based on auditory cues. We have developed a system that allows reproducible research to answer such questions. In this system, the participants' performance both for the main task (simulated by simple arithmetic problems) and for the secondary task (a simulation of a production process) can be measured in a more fine-grained manner than has been the case for existing research in this field. In a within-subject study (n=18), we compared three monitoring conditions - visual only, visual + auditory alerts and a condition combining the visual mode with continuous sonification of process events based on a forest soundscape. Participants showed significantly higher process monitoring performances in the continuous sonification condition, compared to the other two modes. The performance in the main task was at the same time not significantly affected by the continuous sonification. HighlightsWe present a system for reproducible research in sonification for process monitoring.We developed an experiment design to analyze effectiveness in monitoring as secondary task.We compared continuous sonification to visual-only and auditory alerts.Continuous sonification significantly enhances the adequacy of interactions.Participants find continuous sonification significantly more helpful and reassuring.

Continuous sonification enhances adequacy of interactions in peripheral process monitoring

As many users who are charged with process monitoring need to focus mainly on other work while performing monitoring as a secondary task, monitoring systems that purely rely on visual means are often not well suited for this purpose.
Sonification, the presentation of data as (non-speech) sound, has proven in several studies that it can help in guiding the user's attention, especially in scenarios where process monitoring is performed in parallel with a different, main task.
However, there are several aspects that have not been investigated in this area so far, for example if a continuous soundscape can guide the user's attention better than one that is based on auditory cues. We have developed a system that allows reproducible research to answer such questions. In this system, the participants' performance both for the main task (simulated by simple arithmetic problems) and for the secondary task (a simulation of a production process) can be measured in a more fine-grained manner than has been the case for existing research in this field.
In a within-subject study (n=18), we compared three monitoring conditions - visual only, visual + auditory alerts and a condition combining the visual mode with continuous sonification of process events based on a forest soundscape.
Participants showed significantly higher process monitoring performances in the continuous sonification condition, compared to the other two modes. The performance in the main task was at the same time not significantly affected by the continuous sonification.

Supplementary Material for "Continuous Sonification Enhances Adequacy of Interactions in Peripheral Process Monitoring"

For server and network administrators, it is a challenge to keep an overview of their systems to detect potential intrusions and security risks in real-time as well as in retrospect. Most security tools leverage our inherent ability for pattern detection by visualizing different types of security data. Several studies suggest that complementing visualization with sonification (the presentation of data using sound) can alleviate some of the challenges of visual monitoring (such as the need for constant visual focus). This paper therefore provides an overview of the current state of research regarding auditory-based and multimodal tools in computer security. Most existing research in this area is geared towards supporting users in real-time network and server monitoring, while there are only few approaches that are designed for retrospective data analysis. There exist several sonification-based tools in a mature state, but their effectiveness has hardly been tested in formal user and usability studies. Such studies are however needed to provide a solid basis for deciding which type of sonification is most suitable for which kind of scenarios and how to best combine the two modalities, visualization and sonification, to support users in their daily routines.

/pdf/server-sounds-and-network-noises-3mkyjph1uu.pdf

Server sounds and network noises

This paper presents a novel process monitoring system to explore and evaluate the potential of real-time sonifications (i.e. non-verbal auditory representations) for supporting awareness of process states and for detecting and resolving critical process situations. Different from established auditory alarms and warnings, our sonifications convey analogue, i.e. continuous information in form of a process-data-driven soundscape that can be easily blended out in favor of a primary task, yet which is designed to attract the user's attention even before things become critical. We argue that a subsymbolic, implicit and rich display connects better to the human sense to establish auditory categories and develop sensitivity to changes within and in between. In consequence, users may profit from prerational automatic information processing mechanisms so that the cognitive resources remain free for another ‘primary task’. Our system allows to generate a prototypical process in real-time, and we present it by two novel sonification approaches. It encompasses software components to log user performance on the monitoring task, and to engage the user in a primary task. We discuss our sonification designs and first experiences with test users, and outlook on studies that are planned to be conducted using our system.

A sonification system for process monitoring as secondary task

This paper presents a novel process monitoring system to explore and evaluate the potential of real-time sonifications (i.e. non-verbal auditory representations) for supporting awareness of process states and for detecting and resolving critical process situations. Different from established auditory alarms and warnings, our sonifications convey analogue, i.e. continuous information in form of a process-data-driven soundscape that can be easily blended out in favor of a primary task, yet which is designed to attract the user’s attention even before things become critical. We argue that a subsymbolic, implicit and rich display connects better to the human sense to establish auditory categories and develop sensitivity to changes within and in between. In consequence, users may profit from pre-rational automatic information processing mechanisms so that the cognitive resources remain free for another ‘primary task’. Our system allows to generate a prototypical process in real-time, and we present it by two novel sonification approaches. It encompasses software components to log user performance on the monitoring task, and to engage the user in a primary task. We discuss our sonification designs and first experiences with test users, and outlook on studies that are planned to be conducted using our system.

Tobias Hildebrandt

Papers

Continuous sonification enhances adequacy of interactions in peripheral process monitoring

Supplementary Material for "Continuous Sonification Enhances Adequacy of Interactions in Peripheral Process Monitoring"

Server sounds and network noises

A sonification system for process monitoring as secondary task

Supplementary Material for "A Sonification System for Process Monitoring as Secondary Task"