Formal specification terminology for demographic agent-based models of fixed-step single-clocked simulations
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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 fixed-step single-clocked pattern. The proposed terminology further improves the model understanding and can act as a stand-alone methodology for the specification and optionally the documentation of a significant set of (demographic) ABMs. Nevertheless, it is imaginable the this terminology probably with further extensions can be merged with 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, hindering 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, 2023b] as illustration for the formal terminology. The model was implemented in the Julia language [Elsheikh, 2023a] based on the Agents.jl julia package [Datseris et al., 2022].
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