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the overall model) and offers the possibility for component-based de-
velopment. In this context, component refers to agents and objects
which may be modeled and implemented once and reused within
several simulation models, provided that the respective models
support the required event categories.
Minimize potential conflicts
Distinguishing the event categories helps to minimize potential
conflicts. Events of different categories (e. g., endogenous events
within the environment and within an agent) are decoupled and do
not influence each other. Therefore, corresponding state transitions
may be computed independently (and possibly in parallel) by a sim-
ulation engine without the need for synchronization. Furthermore,
limiting the scope of events (e.g., to a single agent type) increases
encapsulation and improves reusability. This aspect is especially
important if development is done in a collaborative fashion and a
global overview and management of event types is hardly achievable.
The set of all possible types of events which can possibly occur is
denoted by
does not denote the actual events
themselves but all different types of events which are suitable and
required for a problem-specific model.
EV
. In other words,
EV
6.6 Micro-level modeling
This section describe the micro-level modeling of an agent-based
model which includes especially structure and behavior of single
agents. Generally speaking, any agent-based model consists of an
environment and multiple entities interacting in it. The term
entity
refers to 'any object or component in the system which requires explicit
representation in the model' [16, p. 68]. An entity can either be an
agent or an object [137].
Definition 15 (Entity set)
The set
ENT
denotes all entities which
are part of an agent-based model.
A
denotes the set of agents and
O
the set of objects with
ENT
=
A
∪
O
and
A
∩
O
=
∅
.
