xSemAD: Explainable Semantic Anomaly Detection in Event Logs Using Sequence-to-Sequence Models

TL;DR

xSemAD is a novel method that uses sequence-to-sequence models to detect and explain semantic anomalies in event logs, aiding understanding and correction of undesirable process behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces an explainable semantic anomaly detection approach that leverages process constraints and sequence-to-sequence models for better interpretability.

Findings

Outperforms existing semantic anomaly detection methods

Provides detailed explanations of anomalies

Facilitates targeted process corrections

Abstract

The identification of undesirable behavior in event logs is an important aspect of process mining that is often addressed by anomaly detection methods. Traditional anomaly detection methods tend to focus on statistically rare behavior and neglect the subtle difference between rarity and undesirability. The introduction of semantic anomaly detection has opened a promising avenue by identifying semantically deviant behavior. This work addresses a gap in semantic anomaly detection, which typically indicates the occurrence of an anomaly without explaining the nature of the anomaly. We propose xSemAD, an approach that uses a sequence-to-sequence model to go beyond pure identification and provides extended explanations. In essence, our approach learns constraints from a given process model repository and then checks whether these constraints hold in the considered event log. This approach not only helps understand the specifics of the undesired behavior, but also facilitates targeted corrective actions. Our experiments demonstrate that our approach outperforms existing state-of-the-art semantic anomaly detection methods.