Towards an emergence-driven software process for agent-based simulation

  • Authors:
  • Nuno David;Jaime Simão Sichman;Helder Coelho

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Information Science and Technology, ISCTE, DCTI, Lisbon, Portugal;Intelligent Techniques Laboratory, University of São Paulo, Brazil;Department of Informatics, University of Lisbon, Portugal

  • Venue:
  • MABS'02 Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Multi-agent-based simulation II
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

In this paper we propose an emergence-driven software process for agent-based simulation that clarifies the traceability of micro and macro observations to micro and macro specifications in agent-based models. We use the concept of hyperstructures [1] to illustrate how micro and macro specifications interact in agent-based models, and show that the reductionism/ non-reductionism debate is important to understand the reliability of agent-based simulations. In particular, we show that the effort expended in the verification of agent-based simulations increases exponentially with the number of micro and macro specifications, and that the reliability assessment of nonanticipated results in simulation is in practice not possible. According to these results we claim to be impossible in practice to verify that an agent-based conceptual model has been implemented properly as a computational model, since we do not usually know what we want the output to be a priori. We thus advocate that the classic process of verification, validation and exploration of non-anticipated results is not reliable in agent-based simulation, and call into question the applicability of traditional software engineering methods to agent-based simulation.