Advances in Information Technologies, Telecommunication, and Radioelectronics by Sergey I. Kumkov & Sergey Shabunin & Stavros Syngellakis

Author:Sergey I. Kumkov & Sergey Shabunin & Stavros Syngellakis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030375140
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

9.3 Modeling Toolkit Choice

In the last few years, the ABM community has taken a giant step in developing practical agent-based modeling toolkits that enable individuals to engineer significantly sized and complex applications. There are several surveys which try to evaluate and compare these toolkits. In [16], the authors have evaluated more than 50 frameworks, in [17, 18] only five modelling frameworks are under discussion, but they might be considered as the most popular ones, they are as follows: Swarm, Java Swarm, Repast, MASON and NetLogo.

In the first survey [16], five widely used characteristics have become the basis for the comparison: complexity of interface and modelling language; operating system required to run the toolkit; type of the license governing the platform (free or proprietary); primary domain for which the toolkit is intended (is it a multipurpose instrument or is intended to model systems of the specific type, i.e. social, biological, economic, etc.); degree of support available to a toolkit user (e.g. documentation quality).

The toolkit language and interface are really important issues. According to this issue, all toolkits can be divided into two groups: in the first group general-purpose programming languages are used such as Java, C++, Python; and the frameworks of the second group have their own modelling languages. Modellers also can be divided into two groups: the first group consists of those who are professionals in the domain area (sociologists, biologists, chemists, etc.), and the second group includes professionals in programming. The first group members are more concerned with the modelling framework ease of use, the degree of programming skills required, and the existence of friendly interfaces to manage simulations. They are not addicted to coding, and it is likely that they will choose something from the second group of modelling toolkits. If the modeller is a professional in programming, he/she will choose a toolkit based on his/her ‘favourite’ language.

As the exception only proves the rule, we have chosen the toolkit with its special modelling language. Being professionals in IT area, we have decided that we would gain interesting new experience along with a new language implementation. The NetLogo [19] modelling environment was chosen as an instrument for the Communication model development and later simulation. This toolkit has its own modelling language, which is considered to be a Logo dialect extended to support agents.

Considering the main NetLogo characteristics (the latter four from the list above), it runs on different Windows versions (e.g. Windows 7/8/10), and also on Mac OS X 10.4, or newer. It needs Java Virtual Machine (JVM), or Java Runtime Environment (JRE) being preinstalled. NetLogo is a free open source system (it is under the terms of the GNU General Public License). This tool is oriented towards education as its primary specialization, but now it has become a powerful tool widely used in various scientific domains, and it is declared to be geared specifically towards the social science domains.

To discuss the degree of the user support, it is necessary to mention: the well-organized documentation built in the environment

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