Equation-Based Models as Formal Specifications of Agent-Based Models for Social Simulation: Preliminary Issues

Abstract

This paper discusses some issues concerning the idea of taking equation-based simulation models (EBM) as formal, mathematical specifications of agent-based models (ABM) for Social Simulation. The paper tries to identify some of the benefits that such point of view could bring to the development of ABM, as well as some of the preliminary problems that an ABM developer has to face, in order to guarantee the credibility of his model. The paper first identifies the benefit of the EBM support for the formal verification of the correction of the ABM, given the correction of the EBM. Then, it identifies a preliminary set of crucial implementation details that are not covered by EBM specifications, and that the simulation developer has to define to make the ABM operational, under the constraint of keeping the ABM model compatible with the EBM. In particular, the two issues of the local vs. global scope of the agents' perceptions and of the degree of personalization of the agents are identified as crucial ones. Some preliminary concepts are proposed to help to solve those two problems.