ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the intersection between two research fields: (1) Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) and (2) computer simulation.
On the one hand, MAS refer to a computer research domain that addresses systems which are composed of micro level entities -agents-, which have an autonomous and proactive behavior and interact through an environment, thus producing the overall system behavior which is observed at the macro level. As such, MAS could be used in numerous research and
application domains. Indeed, MAS are today considered as an interesting and convenient way of understanding, modeling, designing and implementing different kind of (distributed) systems. Firstly, MAS could be used as a programing paradigm to develop operational software systems. MAS are particularly suited to deploy distributed software systems that run in computational contexts wherein a global control is hard or not possible to achieve, as broadly discussed in [Zambonelli and Parunak, 2002]. At the same time, MAS also represent a very interesting modeling alternative, compared to equation based modeling, for representing and simulating real-world or virtual systems which could be decomposed in interacting individuals [Parunak et al., 1998; Klu¨gl et al., 2002].
