Product and process patterns for agent‐based modelling and simulation

Patterns have offered a powerful yet simple way to conceptualize and communicate ideas in many disciplines since Christopher Alexander introduced them in the late 1970s. Patterns in general, and design patterns in particular, became widely used for software development by the 1990s. They have subsequently been shown to be of substantial value in improving software quality and development efficiency. Several authors have suggested that there is great potential for patterns to improve the practice of agent‐based modelling and simulation as well. We consider product and process patterns in this paper. Product patterns are a vocabulary for designing or implementing models. Process patterns are methods for designing, implementing, or using models. This paper's contribution is to identify a set of product and process patterns for agent‐based modelling and simulation. The applicability of each proposed pattern is substantiated with published examples of their use within models or modeling libraries.