Situations in Simulations: An Initial Appraisal

Abstract

Approaches to simulation in the literature range from conventional object-orientation programming, which dates back to the seminal Simula programming language, to the more recent graphical modeling environments in the scope of agent-based modeling and simulation. Despite their clear impact and benefits, we have observed that these approaches have not yet provided support for situation lifecycle management, and do not address a notion of “situation” explicitly. In this paper, we perform a case study in order to examine how the various approaches support the design and execution of simulations. We are particularly interested in contrasting existing approaches to simulation with a declarative rule-based approach that supports situations explicitly. We take into account design time concerns as well as execution time performance. The study focuses on the simulation of populations of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in urban environments.