Software tools for ABMs

A key consideration when embarking on an agent-based modelling focused project is ‘what are we going to write the model in?’. The investment of time and effort that goes into learning a new software tool or a language is so considerable that in the vast majority of cases it is the model that has to be adjusted to the modellers skills and knowledge rather than the the other way round.

Browsing through the OpenABM library it is clear that Netlogo is archaeology’s, social sciences and ecology first choice (51 results), with other platforms and languages trailing well behind (Java – 13 results, Repast – 5 results, Python – 5 results)*. But it comes without saying that there are more tools out there. A new paper published in Computer Science Review compares and contrasts 85 ABM platforms and tools.

It classifies each software package according to the easy of development (simple-moderate-hard) as well as its capabilities (light-weight to extreme-scale). It also sorts them according to their scope and possible subjects (purpose-specific, e.g., teaching, social science simulations, cloud computing, etc., or subject-specific, e.g., pedestrian simulation, political phenomena, artificial life) so that you have a handy list of software tools designed for different applications. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first survey of this kind since this, equally useful but by now badly outdated, report from 2010.

Abar, Sameera, Georgios K. Theodoropoulos, Pierre Lemarinier, and Gregory M.P. O’Hare. 2017. “Agent Based Modelling and Simulation Tools: A Review of the State-of-Art Software.” Computer Science Review 24: 13–33. doi:10.1016/j.cosrev.2017.03.001.

 

* Note that the search terms might have influenced the numbers, e.g., if the simulation is concerned with pythons (the snakes) it would add to the count regardless of the language it was written in.

Image source: wikipedia.org

SSI to the rescue

Ever heard of the Software Sustainability Institute? It is an EPSRC (UK’s engineering and physical science research council) funded organisation championing best practices in research software development (they are quite keen on best practice in data management as well). They have some really useful resources such as tutorials, guides to best practice and listings of the software and data carpentry training events. I wanted to draw your attention to them, because I fell that the times when archaeological simulations will need to start conforming to the painful (yet necessary) software development standards are looming upon us. The institute’s website is a great place to start.

More to the point, the Institute has just release a call for projects (see below for details). In a nutshell, the idea is that a team of research software developers (read: MacGyver meets Big-Bang-Theory) comes over and makes your code better, speeds up your simulation (e.g., by parallelising it), improves your data storage strategy, stabilises the simulation, helps with developing unit testing or version control, packs the model into an ‘out-of-the-box’ format (e.g., by developing a user-friendly interface) or whatever else you ask for that will make your code better, more sustainable, more reusable/replicable or useful for a wider community. All of that free of charge.

The open call below mentions BBSCR and ESRC, but projects funded through any UK research council (incl. AHRC and NERC), other funding bodies as well as projects based abroad are eligible to apply. The only condition is that applications “are judged on the positive potential impact on the UK research community”. The application is pretty straight forward and the call comes up twice to three times a year. The next deadline is 29th April. See below for the official call and follow the links for more details.

 

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Get help to improve your research software

If you write code as part of your research, then you can get help to improve it – free of charge – through the Software Sustainability Institute’s Open Call for Projects. The call closes on April 29 2016.

Apply at http://bit.ly/ssi-open-call-projects

You can ask for our help to improve your research software, your development practices, or your community of users and contributors (or all three!). You may want to improve the sustainability or reproducibility of your software, and need an assessment to see what to do next. Perhaps you need guidance or development effort to help improve specific aspects or make better use of infrastructure.

We accept submissions from any discipline, in relation to research software at any level of maturity, and are particularly keen to attract applications from BBSRC and ESRC funding areas.

The Software Sustainability Institute is a national facility funded by the EPSRC. Since 2010, the Institute’s Research Software Group[1] has assisted over 50 projects across all the UK Research Councils. In an ongoing survey, 93% of our previous collaborators indicated they were “very satisfied” with the results of the work. To see how we’ve helped others, you can check out our portfolio of past and current projects[2].

A typical Open Call project runs between one and six months, during which time we work with successful applicants to create and implement a tailored work plan. You can submit an application to the Open Call at any time, which only takes a few minutes, at http://bit.ly/ssi-open-call-projects.

We’re also interested in partnering on proposals. If you would like to know more about the Open Call, or explore options for partnership, please get in touch with us at info (at) software (dot) ac (dot) uk.