U. Rueppel - Professor of Informatics in Civil Engineering,
S. Greb - Institute for Numerical Methods and Informatics in Civil

In this contribution a new methodical approach is presented to model the processoriented flow of information between different planning partners in heterogeneous computer networks. The modelling of planning activities and the corresponding control of information in Geotechnical Engineering is based on the Petri-Net-theory in conjunction with the specification of meta-information. Petri-Nets provide well-defined semantics for the modelling of concurrent and asynchronous processes in a heterogeneous environment. Furthermore, the specification of meta-information will enable the evaluation and assessment of information being exchanged with regard to the contents of the information. This paper focuses on the representation of information being exchanged between different communication partners as individual tokens of a Petri-Net. Once the information is characterized by the meta-information it is possible not only to define quantitative but also qualitative expressions for Petri-Net elements, i.e. places, transitions and arcs. Thus it will be possible to control the information exchange in computer networks depending on the contents of the information

process modelling, Petri-Nets, Geotechnical information modelling