The Promising Future of Process Mining with the Internet of Events in Context-Aware Environments

Process Mining comprises a consolidated set of techniques that aim at discovering, checking and improving processes. Originally designed to cope with business processes, process mining techniques fed on log files automatically generated by enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and software alike. However, nowadays, with the unstoppable deployment of the Internet of Things, multiple events are continuously generated and stored by distributed, highly uncoupled and heterogeneous devices able to sense their surroundings and report precise and timely updates on the environment. By embracing the Internet of Events, recently available contextual information opens the door to the application of process mining techniques in new domains, hence, generating opportunities for the analysis of contextual data with multiple implications in hot research areas such as, smart environments (e.g., smart cities, smart buildings, smart homes), cognitive systems, and industry 4.0. In this article, we discuss the opportunities and challenges of process mining in these new, events-rich, context-aware environments.