Behavioral Analytics

Behavioral analytics concerns all data produced by a system describing events that occur over time within that system. The system can be defined in a very broad way: from user interaction on a website, data generated by a production site, logs originating from a server park, conversations of humans with chatbots, etc. The context of the problem to be tackled is therefore of the utmost importance.

The very same can be said about an event. The literal meaning of an event is a thing that happens or takes place, which as anything can be stored in databases. Where classic data would describe business objects or the system as discussed earlier, event data describe the events concerning these business objects. This data structure not only allows the discovery of the current state of business objects, but it also enables a rich analysis of its behavior: by registering every click occurring on a website you not only know which pages were opened, additionally you can reconstruct the entire visiting experience for one specific user. This behavioral focus reflects the true value of event data.

Thus far, our research group’s main focus in the event data analytics field is process mining: discovering from data how business processes are truly executed in practice and how they can be improved. Another topic to be explored is the Internet of Things, a valuable event data generator.