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A Formal Approach to Building Compositional Agent-Based Simulations

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Simulating Social Complexity

Part of the book series: Understanding Complex Systems ((UCS))

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Such sets of agreed terms are often called an “ontology” in computer science.

  2. 2.

    The Strictly Declarative Modelling Language SDML (Moss et al. 1998) and the use of the agent-oriented modelling approach DESIRE in social simulation as presented in (Brazier et al. 2001) are two examples.

  3. 3.

    For more information on the use of AGR, see (Jonker and Treur 2003).

  4. 4.

    For formalisation details of the logical relationships put forward above, see (Jonker and Treur 2003).

  5. 5.

    E.g. the Temporal Trace Language (TTL), which defines the dynamics in terms of a “leads to” relation (Jonker et al. 2001). A specification of dynamic properties in leads to format has as advantages that it is executable and that it can often easily be depicted graphically.

  6. 6.

    For a more detailed discussion on this issue, see (Sichman and Conte 1998).

  7. 7.

    Many of the notions discussed in this and the following section are adopted from (Wooldridge and Jennings 1995), (Nwana 1996), (Nwana and Ndumu 1998) and (Jennings and Wooldridge 1998).

  8. 8.

    The material in this section is based on (Brazier et al. 2000).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Man-Machine Interaction, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 4, Delft, 2628 CD, The Netherlands

    Catholijn M. Jonker

  2. Department of Artificial Intelligence, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081a, Amsterdam, 1081 HV, The Netherlands

    Jan Treur

Authors
  1. Catholijn M. Jonker
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  2. Jan Treur
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Catholijn M. Jonker .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CPM - Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, M1 3GH, United Kingdom

    Bruce Edmonds

  2. , Center for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, Aytoun Street, Manchester, M1 3GH, United Kingdom

    Ruth Meyer

Further Reading

Further Reading

For readers interested in software engineering approaches Bergenti et al. (2004) give a thorough introduction to and overview of current methodologies. Gilbert and Terno (2000) offer suggestions on techniques for building and structuring agent-based simulation models, particularly geared towards use in the social sciences.

In addition to methodologies, a lot of work has been done in the development of programming languages and platforms to support the implementation of multi-agent systems and models. Bordini et al. (2010) focus on a comprehensive presentation of MAS programming, including four approaches that are based on formal methods, whereas Railsback et al. (2006) provide a review of platforms for agent-based simulations.

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Jonker, C.M., Treur, J. (2013). A Formal Approach to Building Compositional Agent-Based Simulations. In: Edmonds, B., Meyer, R. (eds) Simulating Social Complexity. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-93813-2_5

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