A RePast Tutorial by John T. Murphy, University of Arizona & Arizona State University (contact)

How to create a RePast model

The RePast simulation tool kit is a set of pre-made programming elements that allows you to build Agent-Based simulation models relatively easily. However, there are a number of steps that are neither intuitive (at least, not to me!) nor thoroughly explicated in any document I've yet found; this brief guide allows you to work through these.

Overview

To use RePast, you must make the current distribution of the RePast jar file available on the Build Path of your compiler; see Build Path for a discussion of how to do this.

A basic RePast model includes the following elements:

  1. A Model Object that acts as the model itself
  2. A Space Object that controls the environment in which the action takes place
  3. An Agent Object

It is theoretically possible to omit the explicit ‘Space’ object, but this is rarely done. If it were omitted, then the agents would either live in a spaceless ‘soup’ or would have only the barest space in which to interact.

Of these the most complicated to set up is the Model object, which is the first to execute and is in control of the simulation, and hence is a reasonable place to start.


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A RePast Tutorial by John T. Murphy, University of Arizona & Arizona State University (contact)