Formal specification terminology for demographic agent-based models of fixed-step single-clocked simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces formal terminology for mathematically specifying demographic agent-based models with fixed-step, single-clocked simulations, enhancing clarity, reproducibility, and serving as a foundation for improved model documentation.

Contribution

It proposes a formal specification terminology for demographic ABMs, improving understanding and documentation, and aims to reduce ambiguity in model communication.

Findings

Formal terminology improves model clarity and reproducibility.

A demographic model was implemented in Julia based on the proposed terminology.

The terminology can serve as a basis for enhancing existing model documentation protocols.

Abstract

This document presents adequate formal terminology for the mathematical specification of a subset of Agent Based Models (ABMs) in the field of Demography. The simulation of the targeted ABMs follows a fixedstep single-clocked pattern. The proposed terminology further improves the model understanding and can act as a stand-alone protocol for the specification and optionally the documentation of a significant set of (demographic) ABMs. Nevertheless, it is imaginable the this terminology can serve as an inspiring basis for further improvement to the largely-informal widely-used model documentation and communication O.D.D. protocol [Grimm and et al., 2020, Amouroux et al., 2010] to reduce many sources of ambiguity which hinder model replications by other modelers. A published demographic model documentation, largely simplified version of the Lone Parent Model [Gostoli and Silverman, 2020] is separately published in [Elsheikh, 2023c] as illustration for the formal terminology presented here. The model was implemented in the Julia language [Elsheikh, 2023b] based on the Agents.jl julia package [Datseris et al., 2022].