An Indirect-Effect-Incorporated Linguistic Z-Number Petri Nets and Its Application to Evaluate Generalized Eco-Driving Behaviors

As a valuable tool for knowledge representation and reasoning, fuzzy Petri nets (FPNs) have obtained widespread application in many fields and achieved ideal results to some degree. However, current methods ignore the reliability of expert evaluations and the indirect effects among propositions, which may lead to decision-making errors or inaccurate evaluations. Thus, the indirect-effect-incorporated linguistic Z-number Petri nets (ILZPNs) are proposed in this paper. The linguistic Z-number is presented to capture knowledge information more comprehensively with its related fuzzy rules. The concepts of indirect effects and its aggression operators are designed to enhance the knowledge reasoning capability of ILZPN. Besides, the formal definition and the corresponding simulation algorithm of ILZPN are presented to conduct knowledge representation and reasoning. Subsequently, an empirical case, i.e., generalized eco-driving behavior evaluation, is applied to verify the proposed approach. In addition, comparison and sensitivity analysis are performed to monitor the robustness of the results. The results prove that this study offers a significant reference for the research into similar issues.