Author: Gert Janssenswillen
Date: 2025-09-08

# Rule-Based Conformance Checking

#### Gert Janssenswillen

#### 2025-09-08

The goal of processcheckR is to support rule-based conformance checking. Currently the following declarative rules can be checked:

Cardinality rules:

- `contains`: activity occurs n times or more
- `contains_exactly`: activity occurs exactly n times
- `contains_between`: activity occures between min and max number of times
- `absent`: activity does not occur more than n - 1 times

Ordering rules:

- `starts`: case starts with activity
- `ends`: case ends with activity
- `succession`: if activity A happens, B should happen after. If B happens, A should have happened before.
- `response`: if activity A happens, B should happen after
- `precedence`: if activity B happens, A should have happend before
- `responded_existence`: if activity A happens, B should also (have) happen(ed) (i.e. before or after A)

Exclusiveness:

- `and`: two activities always exist together
- `xor`: two activities are not allowed to exist together

Rules can be checked using the `check_rule` function (see example below). It will create a new logical variable to indicate for which cases the rule holds. The name of the variable can be configured using the `label` argument in `check_rule`.

## Installation

You can install processcheckR from github with:

    # install.packages("devtools")
    devtools::install_github("gertjanssenswillen/processcheckR")

## Example

    library(bupaR)
    #>
    #> Attaching package: 'bupaR'
    #> The following object is masked from 'package:stats':
    #>
    #>     filter
    #> The following object is masked from 'package:utils':
    #>
    #>     timestamp
    library(processcheckR)
    #>
    #> Attaching package: 'processcheckR'
    #> The following object is masked from 'package:base':
    #>
    #>     xor
    sepsis %>%
      # check if cases starts with "ER Registration"
      check_rule(starts("ER Registration"), label = "r1") %>%
      # check if activities "CRP" and "LacticAcid" occur together
      check_rule(and("CRP","LacticAcid"), label = "r2") %>%
      group_by(r1, r2) %>%
      n_cases()
    #> # A tibble: 4 × 3
    #>   r1    r2    n_cases
    #>   <lgl> <lgl>   <int>
    #> 1 FALSE FALSE      10
    #> 2 FALSE TRUE       45
    #> 3 TRUE  FALSE     137
    #> 4 TRUE  TRUE      858