Collections of reusable "building block" algorithms and code

Share & Showcase
1

Uta Berger and colleagues recently published this paper on reusable building blocks to make agent-based models easier to build and less ad-hoc:
BergerEtAl_2024.pdf (2.0 MB)

Their “building blocks” are general submodels of common mechanisms, designed to be re-used in multiple agent-based models.

As a consequence of this paper, two archives of such “building blocks” were developed. Most of the contributions include both written descriptions and working code (most but not all of which is in NetLogo).

One archive is focused on environmental and ecological models but has at least one model of human decision-making: https://www.rbb4abm.com/

The other archive is maintained by social scientists and is more focused on human decision-making: https://www.agentblocks.org/rbbs/disciplines/sociology

Both currently have only a few building blocks. Please consider contributing, and perhaps some day we can have a more complete collection here on this forum.

1 Like
2

Thank you, Steve! As for the two repositories, https://www.rbb4abm.com/ was meant as a temporary solution. The other one, agentblocks, was not finished when we wrote our paper on RBBs, but it is more comprehensive and has more features than our temporary solution.

The developers of agentblocks are keen to get feedback on their repository and to get suggestions for making the design and upload of RBBs to their repository as smooth as possible (for this, a comparison to rbb4abm can be useful).

I am currently trying to find people who would help developing RBBs of the most important submodels describing human decision making and upload them to agentblocks.

In any case, reading Berger et al. 2024 is always a good first step, as it explains the potentials and limitations of RBBs, and the challenges in producing them and getting them widely used. -

Volker Grimm, Leipzig