Some questions Re: [Swarm-Modelling] EcoLab implementation of Stupid Model

[krishnan raman]

Prof. Russell Standish

 

I am very interested to know about Ecolab.

A few questions.

 

1) Can you please give a few examples of problems where you have found it useful to use Ecolab.    Do you have descriptive papers on these that you could send me copies of ?

2)  While running EcoLab, do I compile it as a project ?

Does this result in a .exe ?  ( Which, e.g., I could think of calling, with parameters, from another program).

  Does it require that I have some version of C++ on my PC ?

 

 

4)   I am trying to download EcoLab ( for a MS Windows environment), but have not yet been able to do so.  I am trying the Superb-East mirror ( McLean, Virginia, USA).

Any recommendations ?

 

Thanks.

 

K. Raman

====================================

Dr. K. Raman

43 Alderwood Drive

West Hartford (Connecticut)  06117

USA

email: address@hidden

 

 

 

 

======================================================
Russell Standish <address@hidden> wrote:

> Just a heads up that I have uploaded an EcoLab version of Railsback et
> al.'s Stupid Model to the EcoLab website
> (http://ecolab.sourceforge.net). This is a useful exercise in
> providing a pedagogical model for learning how to use EcoLab, it provides
> insights to me as a developer into what needs to be improved in EcoLab
> and also provides a rather limited benchmark comparison between
> different ABM
>  platforms.
>
> In the spirit of Railsback's paper, I didn't attempt to fix EcoLab's
> shortcomings, but rather programmed to the existing publically
> available version of the package (4.D20).
>
> I don't seem to have edit priveleges on Swarm.org any more, otherwise
> I'd create some links to the code.
>
> I will be writing a more detailed report later, but I can summarise a
> few of my findings.
>
> 1) EcoLab is about as easy to implement the StupidModel as reported by
> Railsback et al for Repast and Mason. The first step took a little
> longer, as there were no existing example models for using
> Graphcode to implement spaces. Help for spaces is an area for
> improvement.
>
> 2) Performance was about twice as fast as the Repast Java
> implementation when run in batch mode. However, a small amount of
> optimisation was needed to get this - first cut implementations
> could be a lot slower. In GUI mode, EcoLab was substantially
> slower,
>  predominently due to the use of BLT widgets for
> plotting. In summary, with modern Java virtual machines, the
> performance penalty for using Java is not a significant factor.
>
> 3) I did a parallel version of the model, but did not get performance
> improvements (I still haven't investigated this)
>
> 4) For agent based modeling, some form of smart pointer structure is
> essential (Java's object reference model has this feature built
> into the language). EcoLab has an undocumented "ref" class, which
> wasn't up to the job, so I reimplemented this for StupidProject.
>
> 5) Using vectors of smart references seemed to be a natural way of
> implementing scheduling - one can readily sort or randomise the
> ordering of method calls using C++ standard library
> functionality. StupidModel uses periodic scheduling, but aperiodic
> scheduling should also be handled by means using sets of references
> (I'll have a go at implementing some other classic models
>  such as
> the mousetrap).
>
> Cheers
>
> -- 
>
> *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
> is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
> virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
> email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
> may safely ignore this attachment.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics 
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052 address@hidden 
> Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
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