Measuring Complexity of Multi-agent Simulations – An Attempt Using Metrics

The variety of existing agent-based simulations is overwhelming. However – especially when comparing agent-based simulation to other simulation paradigms, a reference frame is missing that allows characterizing shortly and discriminating between simulation models. In this contribution, I address this problem by introducing metrics for measuring properties of agent-based simulations for finally being able to characterize the complexities involved in developing such a model.

[1]  H. E. Dunsmore,et al.  Software engineering metrics and models , 1986 .

[2]  Jack C. Wallace.  The control and transformation metric: toward the measurement of simulation model complexity , 1987, WSC '87.

[3]  Robert Axelrod,et al.  A Model of the Emergence of New Political Actors , 1993 .

[4]  Adelinde M. Uhrmacher,et al.  Object-Oriented and Agent-Oriented Simulation: Implications for Social Science Application , 1995, Social Science Microsimulation.

[5]  Franziska Klügl-Frohnmeyer,et al.  About the Role of the Environment in Multi-agent Simulations , 2004, E4MAS.

[6]  Ching Y. Suen,et al.  Complexity metrics for rule-based expert systems , 1994, Proceedings 1994 International Conference on Software Maintenance.

[7]  Franziska Klügl-Frohnmeyer,et al.  Large-Scale Agent-Based Pedestrian Simulation , 2007, MATES.

[8]  C. Murray Woodside,et al.  Scalability Metrics and Analysis of Mobile Agent Systems , 2000, Agents Workshop on Infrastructure for Multi-Agent Systems.

[9]  Premkumar T. Devanbu,et al.  An Investigation into Coupling Measures for C++ , 1997, Proceedings of the (19th) International Conference on Software Engineering.

[10]  Robert James Firby,et al.  Adaptive execution in complex dynamic worlds , 1989 .

[11]  Joshua M. Epstein,et al.  Growing artificial societies , 1996 .

[12]  Anand S. Rao,et al.  An architecture for real-time reasoning and system control , 1992, IEEE Expert.

[13]  John H. Holland,et al.  Emergence. , 1997, Philosophica.

[14]  Joshua M. Epstein,et al.  Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up , 1996 .

[15]  Chris F. Kemerer,et al.  A Metrics Suite for Object Oriented Design , 2015, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[16]  Scott A. DeLoach,et al.  Using Design Metrics for Predicting System Flexibility , 2006, FASE.

[17]  Behrouz H. Far,et al.  Metrics for agent-based software development , 2003, CCECE 2003 - Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering. Toward a Caring and Humane Technology (Cat. No.03CH37436).

[18]  Jorge J. Gómez-Sanz,et al.  Estimating Costs for Agent Oriented Software , 2005, AOSE.

[19]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  Introduction to multiagent systems , 2001 .