Geoexpression: A Petri network framework for representing geographic process concurrency

We present a novel framework called geoexpression for representing geographic process concurrency and discuss its implications for geographic dynamic modeling. Unapt representations of geographic process concurrency can lead to non-deterministic geographic dynamic modeling outcomes, excessive cognitive burdens when reasoning about how concurrent processes interact, and even inconsistent results. After demonstrating the importance of geographic process concurrency, we examine how the characteristics of geographic process concurrency are missing from other state-of-the-art geographic process representations. The geoexpression framework adopts Petri networks to allow researchers to understand how to relate geographic process concurrency to observed modeling patterns. Of interest are the real-world geographic patterns formed by concurrent geographic processes.