as stated in a comment on the original blog, work on things like these are done using rules engines ( based off rete algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rete_algorithm )

Here is a example of monitoring for a fire in a room, and how one handles it -- similar concepts can be applied to infrastructure components as well ) -- http://blog.athico.com/2009/03/drools-quick-start-stateful-k...