Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) is recognised as one of the techniques with more potential to develop simulations capable of being used in Social Simulation. ABM uses a bottom-up approach to analyse the complexity of human interactions, and understand the emergence of global processes from individuals to the system as a whole. live. ABM is the best tool to simulate the interaction of entities with complex and heterogeneous behaviours within realistic environments. However, these simulations require high computational costs to be effective, and it is difficult to create Agent-Based Models capable of being executed in any type of computer, from laptops to supercomputers.
Pandora is a framework designed to create, execute and analyse agent-based models in high-performance computing environments. It has been programmed to allow the execution of large-scale agent-based simulations, and it is capable of dealing with thousands of agents developing complex actions.
Pandora has full Geographical Information System support, to cope with simulations in which spatial coordinates are relevant, both in terms of agent interactions and environment. The library also allows the researcher to design experiments containing thousands of different runs exploring the parameter sweep of the model. This can be done either by code (both C++ and Python), or using Cassandra.
Cassandra is a general purpose GUI tool that can be used to analyse the results generated by a simulation created with the library. Cassandra allows the user to plan, execute and visualize the complete execution of simulations using a combination of 2D and 3D graphics, as well as statistical figures.