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MultiAgent Based simulations are a powerful tool to explain, understand or predict the emergent phenomena by only specifying entity level behaviors.

The Interaction Oriented Design of Agent simualtions (IODA) methodology aims at making the design of simulations easier and more intuitive. Instead of most existing simulation frameworks like Madkit, Netlogo, Repast or Soar, which focus simulation design mainly on agents, IODA focuses the two fundamental notions underlying any simulation: interactions and entities.

IODA does not center design on agents anymore, but on the interactions they perform together instead. Thereby, the usual context, in which agents are the main elements of the simulation, is reversed in order to focus on the interactions that occur in the system. This has many advandages, including that :

• the interactions that occur between the agents are defined by a plug'n play process;
• the interaction matrix can be automatically transformed into code;
• along with simulations, interactions libraries are built;
• the interaction matrix is fit to design large scale simulations;
• the incremental conception of simulations is supported intuitively;
• all entities that lie in the environment are agents.

A demonstration of some of these features is provided in the following java applet (click on the image to get it): In addition to IODA, a demonstration simulation framework called the Java Environment for the Design of agents Interactions (JEDI) implements accurately IODA concepts. A code generator called JEDI-Builder makes possible de design IODA models, and automatically implement them on the JEDI-Simulation framework.

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