Review of Software Platforms for Agent Based Models

Abstract

This report reviews both general agent based modelling (ABM) and battlefield-specific ABM toolkits against established criteria, namely flexibility, documentation, speed, and facilities. The other main focus of this report is to consider which ABM toolkits are best suited to studying self-organisation, adaptation, and causality in networks, since these are all essential parts of complex adaptive systems of interest to defence. The ABM toolkits evaluated against these requirements were BactoWars, EINSTein, MANA, MASON, NetLogo, Repast, Swarm and WISDOM-II.