sustainability-analysis-tool

Overview

This is a CLI tool meant to be used in conjunction with the framework outlined in my Master's thesis. It is meant to analyse cost-driver enriched event logs, analyse them, and enhance related process models in order to assess and reduce their environmental impact. Also, a visualized comparison between logs before and after process-redesign is supported.

Application

Simulation with Scylla

⚠️ important points below ⚠️

• Either at least one event log needs to have been generated using a fork of the business process simulation engine Scylla, or it must have been extracted from an POIS. In both cases, the format will need to follow the .XES standard and provide additional information:

<trace>
    	<string key="concept:name" value="trace_id"/>
    	<string key="cost:variant" value="one variant to be assessed"/>
    	...
    	<event>
    		<string key="concept:name" value="activity name"/>
    		<string key="lifecycle:transition" value="start"/>
    		<date key="time:timestamp" value="2022-05-30T18:09:24+02:00"/>
    	</event>
    	<event>
    		<string key="cost:driver" value="name of abstract driver that is concretized in cost variant above"/>
    		<string key="concept:name" value="another activity name"/>
    		<string key="lifecycle:transition" value="complete"/>
    		<date key="time:timestamp" value="2022-05-30T18:19:24+02:00"/>
    	</event>
    	...
</trace>

• Additionally, only BPMN diagrams created with bpmn.io can be simulated with Scylla, due to internal parsing and namespace issues. Thus, this tool also relies on it.
• In the model, cost drivers are prefixed by "Cost Driver: ", followed by the name of the abstract cost driver.
• When modelling abstract cost drivers, make sure to only have one data object per abstract cost driver in the model. Further, the associations are directed from cost drivers to activities.
• Cost config files follow the following XML format, where the names of abstract cost drivers needs to correspond to those of the process model:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<costVariantConfig count="count of instances to be simulated with scylla">
    <variant id="one variant to be simulated" frequency="between 0 and 1">
        <driver id="name of abstract cost driver" cost="concrete cost score, e.g. 0.0001"/>
        ...
    </variant>
    <variant id="another variant to be simulated" frequency="between 0 and 1">
        <driver id="name of abstract cost driver" cost="potentially different concrete cost score, e.g. 0.00099"/>
        ...
    </variant>
    ...
</costVariantConfig>

Analysis with this Tool

Using this tool and event logs either simulated or extracted, the following analyses can be made:

• what are the average environmental impacts of a process recorded by an event log?
  • the impacts of individual activities can be highlighted in comparison to the average impact per activity in a process model
• what are the differences in average environmental impacts between two event logs (i.e., for example between before and after process re-design)?
  • the differences can be expressed both in absolute and in relative terms
  • the differences can additionally be highlighted in a process model, indicating improvement or deterioration

Based on this, new iterations with potentially new cost variant configs and simulations runs can be conducted.

Usage and Installation

Usage

Usage: sustainability-analysis-tool [--process-model <path>] [--second-log <path>] [--second-config <path>] [--relative] [--average_difference] <log-file> <cost-variant-config>

Analyse cost-driver enriched event logs and processes

Options and flags:
    --help
        Display this help text.
    --process-model <path>
        Process Model of the first process execution
    --second-log <path>
        Second log file after re-design
    --second-config <path>
        Second log file after re-design
    --relative
        Perform a relative comparison of process costs instead of absolute comparison.
    --average_difference
        Perform a difference analysis based on average differences. If not, it is done in relation to a difference of 0.

This is a normal sbt project. You can compile code with sbt compile, run it with sbt run, and sbt console will start a Scala 3 REPL.

For more information on the sbt-dotty plugin, see the scala3-example-project.

Installation

Either clone this repository and interact with it using sbt run, or download one from the release section of this repository.

Requirements

In order for the tool to run, a working installation of Java 16 is required, as well as SBT 1.6.2 (or later) and Scala 3.1.2. SBT should be able to pick up the required Scala version automatically.

For development, using IntelliJ IDEA 2022.1.2 or newer, including the Scala3 plugin, is recommended.

Packaging

A .jar file can be built by calling

$ sbt assembly

The binary will reside inside the target folder, and can be used instead of explicitly using SBT. For this, only Java 16 is required. If one were to use sbt package, scala dependencies would be missing and scala would be required instead of java only. Then, the binary can be called with

$ java -jar sustainability-analysis-tool.jar <...>