Supporting the Development of Agent-Based Simulations: A DSL for Environment Modeling

Domain-specific languages are a means of speeding up and easing software system development. Agent-based simulations are simulation systems in which autonomous entities, namely agents, are developed in order to reproduce, analyze, or predict a phenomenon under study. Despite its potential, available alternatives for agent-based modeling and simulation benefit from recurrent domain-related concepts, such as domain concerns and standard strategies for creating and initializing entities, in a limited way. Such elements, when represented in models, can potentially ease the modeling and simulation. We propose a domain-specific modeling language that provides ready-to-use concepts for these recurrent agent-based simulation elements with a modularized notation.The language is targeted to the agent-based modeling and simulation domain and is currently focused on modeling the simulated environment. A user study provides evidence that our language decreases the time needed to understand agent-based simulations.