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Towards frabjous: a two-level system for functional reactive agent-based epidemic simulation

Published: 28 January 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Agent-based infection-transmission models, which simulate an infection moving through a population, are being employed more frequently by health policy-makers. However, these models present several obstacles to widespread adoption. They are complex entities and impose a high development and maintenance cost. Current tools can be opaque, requiring multidisciplinary collaboration between a modeler and an expert programmer, and another round of translation when communicating with domain experts. In this paper, we describe the use of functional reactive programming (FRP), a programming paradigm created by imbuing a functional programming language with an intrinsic sense of time, to represent agent-based models in a concise and transparent way. We document the conversion of several agent-based models developed in the popular hybrid modeling tool AnyLogic to a representation in FRP. We also introduce Frabjous, a programming framework and domain-specific language for computational modeling. Frabjous generates human-readable and modifiable FRP code from a model specification, allowing modelers to have two transparent representations in which to program: a high-level model specification, and a full functional programming language with an agent-based modeling framework.

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Cited By

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  • (2019)The Kendrick modelling platform: language abstractions and tools for epidemiologyBMC Bioinformatics10.1186/s12859-019-2843-020:1Online publication date: 11-Jun-2019
  • (2015)NanoverseProceedings of the 2015 Winter Simulation Conference10.5555/2888619.2888640(206-217)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2015
  • (2015)Nanoverse: A constraints-based declarative framework for rapid agent-based modeling2015 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC)10.1109/WSC.2015.7408165(206-217)Online publication date: Dec-2015

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cover image ACM Conferences
IHI '12: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGHIT International Health Informatics Symposium
January 2012
914 pages
ISBN:9781450307819
DOI:10.1145/2110363
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 28 January 2012

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Author Tags

  1. agent- based modeling
  2. agent-based simulation
  3. domain-specific language
  4. dynamic model
  5. functional programming
  6. functional reactive
  7. simulation

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IHI '12
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IHI '12: ACM International Health Informatics Symposium
January 28 - 30, 2012
Florida, Miami, USA

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Cited By

View all
  • (2019)The Kendrick modelling platform: language abstractions and tools for epidemiologyBMC Bioinformatics10.1186/s12859-019-2843-020:1Online publication date: 11-Jun-2019
  • (2015)NanoverseProceedings of the 2015 Winter Simulation Conference10.5555/2888619.2888640(206-217)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2015
  • (2015)Nanoverse: A constraints-based declarative framework for rapid agent-based modeling2015 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC)10.1109/WSC.2015.7408165(206-217)Online publication date: Dec-2015

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