We give a characterization of colored Petri nets as monoidal double functors. Framing colored Petri nets in terms of category theory allows for canonical definitions of various well-known constructions on colored Petri nets. In particular, we show how morphisms of colored Petri nets may be understood as natural transformations. The displayed category construction explains how lax double functors are equivalent to functors with codomain their former domain. We use this result to characterize the unfolding of colored Petri nets in terms of free symmetric monoidal categories.

We present a unified framework for Petri nets and various variants, such as pre-nets and Kock’s whole-grain Petri nets. Our framework is based on a less well-studied notion that we call $\mathrm{\Sigma }$-nets, which allow finer control over whether tokens are treated using the collective or individual token philosophy. We describe three forms of execution semantics in which pre-nets generate strict monoidal categories, $\mathrm{\Sigma }$-nets (including whole-grain Petri nets) generate symmetric strict monoidal categories, and Petri nets generate commutative monoidal categories, all by left adjoint functors. We also construct adjunctions relating these categories of nets to each other, in particular showing that all kinds of net can be embedded in the unifying category of $\mathrm{\Sigma }$-nets, in a way that commutes coherently with their execution semantics.

Petri networks and network models are two frameworks for the compositional design of systems of interacting entities. Here we show how to combine them using the concept of a ‘catalyst’: an entity that is neither destroyed nor created by any process it engages in. In a Petri net, a place is a catalyst if its in-degree equals its out-degree for every transition. We show how a Petri net with a chosen set of catalysts gives a network model. This network model maps any list of catalysts from the chosen set to the category whose morphisms are all the processes enabled by this list of catalysts. Applying the Grothendieck construction, we obtain a category fibered over the category whose objects are lists of catalysts. This category has as morphisms all processes enabled by some list of catalysts. While this category has a symmetric monoidal structure that describes doing processes in parallel, its fibers also have premonoidal structures that describe doing one process and then another while reusing the catalysts.