RatKit: A Repeatable Automated Testing Toolkit for Agent-based Modeling and Simulation

Oğuz Dikenelli (1) , Önder Gürcan (2) , İbrahim Çakirlar (1) , Şebnem Bora (1)

1 Ege University - EGE (Izmir, Turkey)
2 DILS - Département Ingénierie Logiciels et Systèmes

Agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) became an attractive and efficient way to model large-scale complex systems. However, achieving a sufficiently credible agent-based simulation (ABS) model is still difficult due to weak verification, validation and testing (VV&T) techniques. Moreover, there is no comprehensive and integrated toolkit for VV&T of ABS models that demonstrates that inaccuracies exist and/or which reveals the existing errors in the model. Based on this observation, we designed and developed RatKit: a toolkit for ABS models to conduct VV&T. RatKit facilitates the VV&T process of ABMS by providing an integrated environment that allows repeatable and automated execution of tests. This paper presents RatKit in detail and demonstrates its effectiveness by showing its applicability on a simple well-known ABMS case study.

Keywords: model testing; Agent-based modeling and simulation; verification and validation

Domains: Computer Science [cs]; Artificial Intelligence [cs.AI]; Computer Science [cs]; Modeling and Simulation; Computer Science [cs]; Multiagent Systems [cs.MA]

Oğuz Dikenelli, Önder Gürcan, İbrahim Çakirlar, Şebnem Bora. RatKit: A Repeatable Automated Testing Toolkit for Agent-based Modeling and Simulation. the 15th International Workshop on Multi-Agent Simulation (MABS 2014) to be held at the 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2014), May 2014, Paris, France. ⟨cea-01807020⟩