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Strictly separating the definition of the term
simulation
and the
simulation engine as the actual software executing the simulation
provides numerous benefits [151, p. 29]:
Algorithms for executing a simulation as well as simulation engines
may be specified and their correctness established rigorously.
The same simulation model may be executed by different simulation
engines, thus opening the way for portability and interoperability
at a high level of abstraction.
Different simulation engines may utilize the underlying computer
hardware in an optimal way. Most notably, a simulation engine
might parallelize the execution of a model.
Specific application areas of simulation may impose additional require-
ments on a simulation model or simulation engine (e.g., regarding
update rate).
2.2 Agent-based modeling and simulation
2.2.1 Agent
Agent-based modeling and simulation is a paradigm which gains more
and more attention for analyzing complex systems and becomes more
and more widespread over the last years. While some authors claim
that agent-based simulation seems to be a relatively new idea for the
simulation community [109], others argue that agent-based modeling
and simulation 'should not be seen as a completely new and original
simulation paradigm' [27]. As the notion of an
agent
is the central
idea upon which agent-based modeling is built, it is important to have
a clear understanding of what is meant by this term. Surprisingly,
there is no general agreement on a precise definition of the term
agent
.
Besides the ongoing debate and controversy, definitions tend to
agree on more points than they disagree [148, p. 28], [83, 109, 80, 61].
For the purpose of this thesis, an agent is defined as follows:
