The Language Dura: A Declarative Event Query Language for Reactive Event Processing

The development of Complex Event Processing (CEP) towards a mature and recognized technology has facilitated the implementation of a wide range of applications in areas like online marketing, logistics, finance, and manufacturing processes. Applications in these domains substantially benefit from the timely detection of higher-level knowledge that is derived by the continuous evaluation of standing complex event queries against a volatile stream of incoming event messages. Public infrastructures like metro systems and airports are facing similar requirements, as they are increasingly equipped with various sensors and actuators generating a vast amount of events which need to be interpreted in a timely and continuous manner. However, due to the physical nature of such infrastructures, the approaches commonly applied cannot be easily transferred to monitor and control them. Nevertheless, those infrastructures require more elaborated and effective technical solutions to support human operators, as their complexity is approaching the limit that can be reasonably handled by humans, in particular during unusual incidents such as emergencies. The work presented in this thesis is devoted to closing the gap between the requirements of modern Emergency Management (EM) and the capabilities of current CEP approaches by investigating means towards more reactive event processing, in particular with respect to interactions with external actuators.