Towards an Ideal Social Simulation Language
CPM Report No.: CPM-02-91
By: Bruce Edmonds and Steve
Wallis
Date: 18th March 2002
A condensed version will be presented as:
Edmonds, B. (2002)Towards an Ideal Social Simulation Language. 3rd
International Workshop on Multi-Agent Based Simulation (MABS'02)
at AAMAS'02, Bologna,
15-16 July 2002.
Abstract
The problem of social simulation is analysed, indentifying what I call
‘syntactic’ and ‘semantic’ complexity. The presence of these means
that social simulation has particular needs in terms of computational tools.
I suggest an approach where one identifies, documents and checks constraints
from a variety of sources. Eight criteria for a computational tool
to support social simulation are listed. I speculate that a general
computational framework for developing, running and comparing models could
greatly aid social simulation. This would facilitate the management
and checking of the complex clusters of models that complex systems seem
to necessitate.
Accessible as:
The appendix, which describes the an implementation of the Schelling model
of racial segregation can be accessed as: