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Agents

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An agent is an abstract representation of a real-world entity. This could be a person, place, business, organization, country, etc.

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Agents have behaviours and interact with other agents. These sets of non-linear interactions, over time, can produce emergent phenomena, like herding in a financial market or the spread of an infectious disease across a population.

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Agents in the Simudyne SDK are autonomous components capable of interacting with other agents and reacting to changes in their environment.

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Interactions between agents are accomplished via a message passing framework. Agents communicate with one another by sending and receiving messages that share information or trigger state changes within the agents.

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Agents contain the necessary functionality to store information, send and receive messages, create or remove connections to other agents, and even spawn other agents.

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Below is an example of a skeleton structure of an Agent class with a dummy message pass phase set up between simple agents:

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SimpleAgent.java

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import simudyne.core.abm.Action;\nimport simudyne.core.abm.Agent;\nimport simudyne.core.annotations.Variable;\n\npublic class SimpleAgent extends Agent<Globals> {\n\n    @Variable\n    public int variable1;\n\n    @Variable\n    public int variable2;\n    \n    public static Action<SimpleAgent> sendMessage =\n            Action.create(SimpleAgent.class, simpleAgent -> {\n              simpleAgent.getLinks(Links.SimpleAgentLink.class).send(Messages.BroadcastMessage.class, msg -> {\n                  msg.value = simpleAgent.variable1;\n              });\n            });\n\n    public static Action<SimpleAgent> receiveMessage =\n            Action.create(SimpleAgent.class, simpleAgent -> {\n               simpleAgent.getMessagesOfType(Messages.BroadcastMessage.class).forEach(msg -> {\n                   simpleAgent.variable2 += msg.value;\n               });\n            });\n}
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Networks

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Networks between agents are representative of real-world relationships and communication.

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Agents can have very simple or complex networks that define their relationships.

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In the Simudyne SDK, these relationships are represented as a network built of Links. Links are a fundamental component of an ABM as they form the structure of the network.

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When two agents are connected via Links, they are able to pass messages across those links, or store information on the link that both parties can access.

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The Simudyne SDK implements numerous graph generation algorithms for building specific network / link structures between agents in the system. Multiple different complex network structures can exist simultaneously, connecting populations of agents in a manner that best represents reality.

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Links can also be added and removed during runtime, resulting in a dynamic network as the system evolves.

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Below is an example of a simple model class where agents are generated and then connected to one another using one of the Simudyne SDK graph generation functions:

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SimpleModel.java

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import simudyne.core.abm.AgentBasedModel;\nimport simudyne.core.abm.GlobalState;\nimport simudyne.core.abm.Group;\nimport simudyne.core.annotations.Input;\n\npublic class SimpleModel extends AgentBasedModel<Globals> {\n\n    public static final class Globals extends GlobalState {\n\n        @Input(name = \"Number Simple Agents\")\n        public long nbSimpleAgents = 100;\n\n        @Input(name = \"Starting Value\")\n        public int valueStart = 100;\n\n        @Input(name = \"Send Value \")\n        public int value = 1;\n\n    }\n\n    @Override\n    public void init() {\n        registerAgentTypes(SimpleAgent.class);\n        registerLinkTypes(Links.SimpleAgentLink.class);\n    }\n\n    @Override\n    public void setup() {\n\n        Group<SimpleAgent> simpleAgentGroup = generateGroup(SimpleAgent.class, getGlobals().nbSimpleAgents, simpleAgent -> {\n            simpleAgent.variable1 = getGlobals().valueStart;\n        });\n\n        simpleAgentGroup.fullyConnected(simpleAgentGroup, Links.SimpleAgentLink.class);\n\n        super.setup();\n    }\n\n    @Override\n    public void step() {\n        super.step();\n\n        run(SimpleAgent.sendMessage, SimpleAgent.receiveMessage);\n\n    }\n}
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More on Agent creation, connections, and communication can be found in the Agents section

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