A Call to Arms: Standards for Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation

Abstract

Standards are as old as civilization itself and they are vital to human development. Standards touch almost every part of our lives, from the water we drink to the language used to write this article. A sign of a good standard is one that we do not notice. Good standards exist and so do processes and organizations to create and maintain them. As agent-based modeling and simulation matures as a methodology, a discussion of standards applicable to it becomes increasingly important. Descriptive standards for agent-based models, such as the Overview, Design concepts, and Details protocol and agent-based extensions to the Unified Modeling Language, have already begun to emerge. Software tools for implementing such models, such as Netlogo and Repast Simphony, are increasingly well-known and have the potential to become de facto standards among the wider scientific community for agent-based simulation. Based on the findings of a series of workshops that brought together experts throughout the modeling and simulation community, we argue that agent-based modeling and simulation is no different from the other emerging technical subjects in the sense that standards, both existing and new, may be applicable to it, and that the community should both adopt existing standards that are relevant and exploit the already existing standards processes and organizations to develop new ones.

Ideal, Best, and Emerging Practices in Creating Artificial Societies

“…This list is not exhaustive: for example, social interactions may be shaped not only by social networks (as we examined) but also by how the (geo)space is represented. Given that standardization efforts are ongoing, our list may be amended through discussions in workshops with simulation experts (Collins et al 2015) and/or by examining the results when these items are applied on the literature.…”

Applications of agent-based modelling and simulation in the agri-food supply chains

“…A good model representation is important for the communication between stakeholders which affects the credibility of a model (Onggo, 2013). It is also important to ensure that the model can be duplicated and developed further by other researchers (Collins et al, 2015). Table 10 shows that most papers do not use any structured model representation techniques (i.e.…”

Multiobjective Genetic Programming Can Improve the Explanatory Capabilities of Mechanism-Based Models of Social Systems

“…is work and the underlying model discovery process contribute to the needs for standards and modeling practices in the ABS community. Collins et al [43] pointed out that as ABS matures, with many simulation software tools (like Netlogo [44] and Repast Symphony [45]), potential standards and protocols will be needed and proposed. For example, Grimm et al [46] designed the ODD (Overview, Design concepts, and Details) protocol as a generic and structured template to describe agent-based models for better communication and replicability.…”