A process oriented approach for qualitative modelling and analysis of dynamical systems.

The representation of dynamical systems according to the principles of qualitative analysis and simulation has two main aspects: The structural model representing the structure of real world objects in the system, and the description of the processes that run on the system. The second is content of this paper. We introduce a process-oriented approach that allows to represent temporal and causal relationships, to discriminate continuous and discrete processes and to aggregate processes. The possible behaviors of a system can be determined by qualitative reasoning about processes, which is the basis for simulation. (IITB)