Using NetLogo in the Data Farming Environment

Abstract

NetLogo is a freely available agent-based modeling environment being developed by Northwestern University’s Center for Connected Learning (ccl.northwestern.edu/ netlogø). NetLogo is an excellent environment for creating simpler or smaller-scale agent-based models or prototyping more complex models. NetLogo’s strengths include using a very easy to learn and flexible scripting environment, a GUI interface that handles all the necessary code for you, and a section dedicated to documenting your model, and a very large sample model library with very good documentation. The down side of NetLogo is that you must create all functionality you desire to have in the model, which can be time consuming if you have a great deal of complicated behaviors. Furthermore, NetLogo is written in Java and its scripting language is only semi-compiled (some primitives are compiled into Java byte-code, other primitives are interpreted), which can lead to some performance issues if your models is very large or involves a great deal of computation. Finally, NetLogo is compatible with the Data Farming and cluster computing methods and tools created by Project Albert and its collaborators.