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In-Depth Information
While all aspects of concurrency are described on macro-time level,
concurrent actions are interleaved on the micro-time level. Therefore,
the model of Ke and Hu suffers from the same disadvantages already
mentioned for the model of De Vries et al. in the previous section
(especially stepwise execution and close coupling of components).
2.3.7 Summary
This section summarizes the common aspects of the presented ap-
proaches to describe agent-based models and the further presented
approaches as well as the differences between them. Although the
models and approaches presented cover a wide range and are not
necessarily comparable to each other, there are a few aspects which
all these models have in common:
Situatedness of the agents and importance of the environment
Distinction of active and passive entities
Distinction between intended actions and the actual outcome
Assumption of time-stepped execution
Besides these common aspects, all presented approaches suffer from
certain weaknesses. To be clear, not all of the approaches suffer from
all of these weaknesses, instead the list is meant as a more or less
complete account of the identified weaknesses:
Unclear distinction between model and simulation engine
Insucient definition of simulation time and time-advancement
mechanism
No consideration of concurrent and conflicting actions
Insu
cient consideration of the environment
The above mentioned aspects are discussed in detail in the following
subsections.
