SOARS: Spot Oriented Agent Role Simulator — Design and Implementation

Abstract

In this paper we present the design of an agent-based simulation language called SOARS (Spot Oriented Agent Role Simulator). SOARS is designed to describe agent activities according to roles within social and organizational structures. Role taking processes can be described in our language. SOARS is also designed according to the theory of agent-based dynamic systems. Decomposition of multi-agent interaction is one of the most important characteristics of our framework. The notion of spot and stage gives spacial and temporal decomposition of interaction among agents. We apply our multi-agent framework to policy analysis of emerging virus protection in the case of SARS. In the latter part of the paper, we explain the implementation of the SOARS simulation platform. The simulation engine and related built-in functional objects are implemented in Java language. An application user can describe the agent-based simulation model only by writing script in SOARS script language without knowledge of Java classes. If needed, the user can customize the function of SOARS by implementing additional Java classes. The easiest way to customize is to develop special functional objects, and the SOARS platform will be the interface between such customized objects.