Pervasive computing implies new challenges for software developers. In addition to tackling common problems pertaining to IT systems in general, new issues like mobility and context-awareness must be dealt with. The contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that Coloured Petri Nets (CPN) have potential as an aid in the development of pervasive systems. On a case study of a pervasive health care system for the hospitals in Aarhus, Denmark, we describe how CPN are applied in the everyday software development disciplines of requirements engineering and design. A number of the observations made in the case study are of a nature making them applicable to use of CPN in development of pervasive systems in general.

Topics. Experience with using nets, case studies; higher-level net models (CPN); application of nets to health and medical systems; requirements engineering; system design; pervasive computing.