A rule-based platform for situation management

This paper introduces a platform for situation management, which supports the development of situation-aware applications by offering (i) design artifacts for situation type specification, and (ii) run-time support for situation lifecycle management (situation detection, which may involve composite situation pattern recognition and ultimately situation deactivation). Our approach leverages on JBoss Drools engine (and its integrated Complex Event Processing platform) and enhances its functionality to natively support rule-based situation-awareness. Our platform allows rule-based situation specification (and further situation lifecycle management) by means of a simple rule pattern. We exemplify our situation-based development approach with an application scenario in the public health domain, in which situation types for detecting and monitoring suspicious cases of tuberculosis are specified as situation rules. The specified rules are then deployed and situation detection is managed by the proposed rule-based situation platform.