This state-of-the-art survey in the Advances in Petri Nets series reports how various well-established and novel Petri net notions and techniques can be employed for modelling communication-based systems, with a particular focus on workflow management and business processes.The book builds on the success of a special program of the German Science Foundation (DFG) on Petri Net Technology as well as on broad participation from the international Petri net research community.

This book reflects the latest research trends, methods, and experimental results in the field of electrical and information technologies for rail transportation, which covers abundant state-of-the-art research theories and ideas. As a vital field of research that is highly relevant to current developments in a number of technological domains, the subjects it covered include intelligent computing, information processing, communication technology, automatic control, etc. The objective of the proceedings is to provide a major interdisciplinary forum for researchers, engineers, academicians, and industrial professionals to present the most innovative research and development in the field of rail transportation electrical and information technologies. Engineers and researchers in academia, industry, and government will also explore an insightful view of the solutions that combine ideas from multiple disciplines in this field. The volumes serve as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on rail transportation and electrical and information technologies.

This tutorial volume originates from the 4th Advanced Course on Petri Nets, ACPN 2003, held in Eichstätt, Germany in September 2003. In addition to lectures given at ACPN 2003, additional chapters have been commissioned to give a well-balanced presentation of the state of the art in the area. This book will be useful as both a reference for those working in the area as well as a study book for the reader who is interested in an up-to-date overview of research and development in concurrent and distributed systems; of course, readers specifically interested in theoretical or applicational aspects of Petri nets will appreciate the book as well.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets, ICATPN 2000, held in Aarhus, Denmark, in June 2000. The 20 revised full papers presented together with four invited surveys and four tool presentations were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 submissions. The papers address all current aspects of Petri net research and development including system design and verification, UML, compositionality, process algebras, model checking, computer networking, business process engineering, communication networks, etc. Various classes of Petri nets are discussed including safe Petri nets, high-level Petri nets, colored Petri nets, P/T nets, and timed Petri nets.

Since their introduction nearly 40 years ago, research on Petri nets has diverged in many different directions. Various classes of Petri net, motivated either by theory or applications, with its own specific features and methods of analysis, have been proposed and studies in depth. These successful developments have led to a very heterogeneous landscape of diverse models, and this, in turn, has stimulated research on concepts and approaches that contribute to unifying and structuring the diverse landscape. This state-of-the-art survey presents the most relevant approaches to unifying Petri nets in a systematic and coherent way. The 14 chapters written by leading researchers are organized in topical sections on application-oriented approaches, unifying frameworks, and theoretical approaches.

The refereed proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Applications and Theory of Petri Nets, ICATPN 2003, held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in June 2003. The 25 revised full papers presented together with 6 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from 77 submissions. All current issues on research and development in the area of Petri nets are addressed, in particular concurrent systems design and analysis, model checking, networking, business process modeling, formal methods in software engineering, agent systems, systems specification, systems validation, discrete event systems, protocols, and prototyping.