Modelling and simulation of social systems with INGENIAS

Abstract

Most agent-based simulation toolkits are based on the Java programming language. This makes their use difficult for social scientists, who are usually not skilled in computer programming. However, agent modelling concepts are not unlike those which could be used for the modelling of social systems. This assumption is considered in proposing the use of a graphical agent-oriented language for the specification of social simulation models, and for transforming (automatically) these models to code for an agent-based simulation toolkit. In this manner, a social scientist could prepare social models in a more convenient way, and execute simulations on existing simulation toolkits, getting results back in terms of the model. This framework is built with a set of agent development tools, specifically, the INGENIAS Development Kit (IDK), which provides a customisable model editor and modules for automatic code generation.