Spatial-Temporal Event Correlation

Temporal event correlation deals with removing temporally redundant events to produce synthesized events, simplifying downstream processing. In situation management applications and location-based services, it is necessary to incorporate spatial constraints into the correlation process. This requirement is difficult to meet because the traditional algorithms for spatial processing are not well-suited to spatial dynamics occurring in these applications. In this paper we formalize spatial-temporal event correlation compared to the functionality of temporal correlation, present an architecture for efficient implementation, analytically analyze the architecture's performance relative to two other designs, and describe a system design for efficiently supporting situation management applications and location-based services.