Methods and apparatus are provided for distributed rule processing in a sense and respond system. A method for identifying a candidate set of rules is disclosed, comprising the steps of: identifying one or more rules that receive information from one or more sensors to create a first candidate set of rules; evaluating each of the identified rules to identify an initial candidate set of rules, wherein a rule is added to the initial candidate set if a selected device is associated with sensors that are enabled to produce information for the rule being evaluated, if the selected device is enabled to locally provide input information required by the rule being evaluated, and if the rule being evaluated is associated with a group of devices and there are no correlation operators that consume events generated from other devices in the group of devices; and evaluating each rule in the initial candidate set to identify a final candidate set of rules, wherein any rule that receives information from the rule being evaluated is added to the initial candidate set to create the final candidate set if the selected device is enabled to locally satisfy input information required by the rule that receives information and if the rule that receives information is associated with a group of devices and there are no correlation operators that consume events generated from other devices in the group of devices.