Software, data and modelling news: StellaR: A software to translate Stella models into R open-source environment

  • Authors:
  • Babak Naimi;Alexey Voinov

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Environment and Energy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran;Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Environmental Modelling & Software
  • Year:
  • 2012

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Stella is a popular system dynamics modeling tool, which helps to put together conceptual diagrams and converts them into numeric computer models. Although it can be very useful, especially in participatory modeling, it lacks the power and flexibility of a programming language. This paper presents the StellaR software which translates a Stella model into a model in R, an open source high level programming language. This allows using conceptual modeling tools provided in Stella, together with computational functionality and programming flexibility provided in R. It also opens access to powerful software libraries available in R, which is especially useful for spatial modeling.