Moon, I.-C., 2014. Formal agent-based models of social systems. In D. Gianni, A. D’Ambrogio, & A. Tolk, eds. Modeling and Simulation-Based Systems Engineering Handbook. CRC Press, pp. 67–94.

Abstract : 

This chapter introduces two formal modeling approaches of social systems in the agent-based approach. Currently, some dominant modeling environments (North et al. 2006; Sklar 2007) of agent-based models provide technical implementation methods, but these technical implementation, that is, program source code, is not clear enough to be understood by other modelers. This leads the problem of model transparency and model reusability. On the other hand, formal specification approaches developed in the system’s engineering field are more adapted to composing heterogeneous models and to representing models as black boxes, as well as white boxes. The formal specification approaches are grounded by a set-theory-based mathematics, or formalism (Goodman 1979). Hence, the main question of formal specification of agent-based models is how is it possible to apply formalism to these agent-based models? To introduce these formal modeling approaches in the agent-based models, this chapter first reviews the existing formal specification approaches. Then, the chapter introduces two
formal modeling approaches to formally describe an agent-based model. The two approaches are meta-network modeling (Carley 2002; Krackhardt and Carley 1998) and discrete event systems (DEVS) modeling (Zeigler 1972; Zeigler et al. 2000). This research has illustrated the approaches by providing theoretical background and a practical case study. The meta-network model provides a structural template to formally specify how social entities, resources, and information pieces are assigned, linked, and owned. This model is particularly useful when diverse types of entities are included to build an agent-based model. The DEVS model formally illustrates the detailed behavior of models by events and state transition functions. This model can be hierarchically composed as well as reused in other models.

@incollection{DBLP:reference/mosi/Moon14,

  author    = {Il{-}Chul Moon},

  title     = {Formal agent-based models of social systems},

  booktitle = {Modeling and Simulation-Based Systems Engineering Handbook.},

  pages     = {67--94},

  year      = {2014},

  crossref  = {DBLP:reference/mosi/2014},

  url       = {http://www.crcnetbase.com/doi/abs/10.1201/b17902-5},

  timestamp = {Fri, 13 Mar 2015 17:30:17 +0100},

  biburl    = {http://dblp.uni-trier.de/rec/bib/reference/mosi/Moon14},

  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, http://dblp.org}

}

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