Inferring Dependency Graphs for Agent-Based Models Using Aspect-Oriented Programming

Abstract

Population-based CTMC models can generally be executed efficiently with stochastic simulation algorithms (SSAs). However, the heterogeneity in agent-based models poses a challenge for SSAs. To allow for an efficient simulation, we take SSAs that exploit dependency graphs for population-based models and adapt them to agent-based models. We integrate our approach with object-oriented frameworks for agent-based simulation by detecting dependencies via aspect-oriented programming (AOP). This way, modelers can implement models without manually recording dependency information, while still executing the models with efficient, dependency-aware SSAs. We provide an open-source implementation of our approach for the framework MASON, showing significant speedups in model execution.