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6 What Software Engineering Has to Offer to Agent-Based Social Simulation 97

In the following we show based on an illustrative example that there is no need
to be afraid of formal approaches but that they can indeed be useful to support
awareness about the actual model content when developing a model.

Our Structured Approach

When developing ABSS models, one faces the question of how to build them and
where to start. This can be challenging not only for novices in the field but also
for multidisciplinary teams where it is often difficult to engage everyone in the
modelling process. Over the years we have developed a quite sophisticated “plan
of attack” in the form of a framework that guides the model development and can
be used by either individuals or teams.
When used by individuals, they need to consider the perspective of potential team
members (i.e. slip into their roles) during each process step. When used by teams,
co-creation is an important aspect. Team members need to be open-minded about
the use of new tools and methods and about the collaboration with researchers from
other domains and business partners. This is often not easy for researchers trained
in more traditional approaches or for business partners who often expect researchers
to act like consultants, providing them with a report and a list of recommendations
(Mitleton-Kelly 2003).
Our framework, called the “Engineering Agent Based Social Simulation” frame-
work (or EABSS framework for short), supports model reproducibility through
rigorous documentation of the conceptual ideas, underlying assumptions and the
actual model content. The framework provides a step-by-step guide to conceptual-
ising and designing ABSS models with the support of software engineering tools
and techniques. Figure 6.2 provides an overview of the steps that make up the
development process.

Fig. 6.2 Overview of our EABSS framework