Generating multi-level explanations for process outcome predictions

Abstract

Process mining focuses on the analysis of event log data to build various process analytical capabilities. Predictive process analytics has emerged as one of such key capabilities and it uses machine learning techniques to construct process prediction models. In recent years, deep neural networks have gained increasing interest in process prediction since they can handle multi-dimensional sequential inputs with minimal information loss. However, they are considered black-box models and existing studies in explaining deep neural network-based process predictions rely on only event-level features for explanation. In this paper, we propose a new approach for generating explanations for process outcome predictions at multiple levels. The approach is underpinned by three different prediction models: a transparent model for generating global explanations based on case-level features, an attention-based deep neural network for generating local explanations based on event-level features, and a novel eXplainable Dual-learning Deep network (XD2-net) for generating local explanations based on case-level features. Using three publicly available datasets, we have tested the applicability of the approach and further examined the multi-level explanations generated by the approach through an elaborate case study. Unlike others, the design of our approach promotes the idea of leveraging the complementary capabilities of different models and utilizing their strengths, rather than focusing on model performance competition. This will contribute towards generating more comprehensive explanations that meet the needs of different end users and purposes in the future.