Trust-Based Situation Awareness: Comparative Analysis of Agent-Based and Population-Based Modeling

Abstract

In recent years, to comprehend and analyze complex systems, multiagent systems modeling and simulation are being widely used across various disciplines. Two major approaches used for multiagent systems modeling and simulation are agent-based modeling (ABM) and population-based modeling (PBM). In multiagent community, it is a silent assumption that both approaches represent similar dynamics for large population size. One of the recent studies from literature has reported similar results for a model of situation awareness spread in multiagent systems. Trust is a significant factor that affects agents’ communication, and consequently it controls spread of situation awareness among agents in a multiagent system. Hence, current work firstly extends the reported model of situation awareness spread from literature, to incorporate interagent trust for both ABM and PBM. Later, these extended models are used for comparative evaluation of both approaches. Various simulation experiments for different population sizes (small and large) as well as population types (homogenous and heterogeneous) are conducted and analyzed. Results of these experiments show that for large and homogeneous population, ABM approximates behavior of PBM, but for even slightly heterogeneous population, these approaches do not produce similar results irrespective of population sizes. Thus, the current study reports that, under some conditions, ABM and PBM produce similar results for trust-based situation awareness spread in multiagent systems, but this assumption does not hold true at large.