This document defines enrichments, extensions and structuring mechanisms of Petri nets, applied on the definitions proposed in ISO/IEC 15909-1. This document facilitates the definitions of new kinds of Petri nets and their interoperability, while remaining compatible with those defined in ISO/IEC 15909-1.

This document is written as a reference for designers of new Petri net variants, by defining common enrichments, extensions and structuring mechanisms, as well as a generalized process for defining new ones.

This document is applicable to a wide variety of concurrent discrete event systems and in particular distributed systems. Generic fields of application include:

—    requirements analysis;

—    development of specifications, designs and test suites;

—    descriptions of existing systems prior to re-engineering;

—    modelling business and software processes;

—    providing the semantics for concurrent languages;

—    simulation of systems to increase confidence;

—    formal analysis of the behaviour of systems;

—    and development of Petri net support tools.

This document can be applied to the design of a broad range of systems and processes, including aerospace, air traffic control, avionics, banking, biological and chemical processes, business processes, communication protocols, computer hardware architectures, control systems, databases, defence command and control systems, distributed computing, electronic commerce, fault-tolerant systems, games, hospital procedures, information systems, Internet protocols and applications, legal processes, logistics, manufacturing systems, metabolic processes, music, nuclear power systems, operating systems, transport systems (including railway control), security systems, telecommunications and workflow.