STCSP: A Representation Model for Sequential Patterns

Temporal constraint satisfaction problem is a useful formalism for representing and reasoning about temporal occurrences and their temporal relationships. In this paper, we present a new temporal constraint satisfaction problem to deal with sequential patterns (STCSP). The problem is represented as a constraint satisfaction problem with sequential valuated variables, where multiple sequential values are attributed for each variable. Several classes of STCSP can be defined: qualitative/quantitative intervals/points and any combination of them. We will introduce the STCSP in the case of qualitative points. The main results are: (i) a new formalization of the sequential patterns problems, (ii) the definition of the usual problems: finding solution, checking the consistency, answering queries about scenarios that satisfy some classes of constraints, etc., (iii) the algorithm for reasoning about qualitative point STCSP with a particular evaluation function.