The problem of dynamic sensor activation for event diagnosis in partially observed discrete event systems is considered. Diagnostic agents are able to activate sensors dynamically during the evolution of the system. Sensor activation policies for diagnostic agents are functions that determine which sensors are to be activated after the occurrence of a trace of events. The sensor activation policy must satisfy the property of diagnosability of centralized systems or codiagnosability of decentralized systems. A policy is said to be minimal if there is no other policy, with strictly less sensor activation, that achieves diagnosability or codiagnosability. To compute minimal policies, we propose language partition methods that lead to efficient computational algorithms. Specifically, we define "window-based" language partitions for scalable algorithms to compute minimal policies. By refining partitions, one is able to refine the solution space over which minimal solutions are computed at the expense of more computation. Thus a compromise can be achieved between fineness of solution and complexity of computation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.