Computer Science

Colloquium Details

FOREST: A System for Developing and Evaluating Ecosystem Simulation Models

Abstract

Due to the large number of components and inherent complexity of an ecosystem, modelers have encountered many significant biological and computational challenges in the development of realistic ecological simulations. The similarities between ecosystems and the hierarchical nature of ecosystems suggest the possibility of creating reusable and extendable components, to reduce development time and improve understanding of model structure. FOREST (Forest Object-oriented Reusable Ecosystem Simulation Template) is a software environment for designing, implementing, and evaluating ecosystem simulations. Written in Java, it encourages modelers to use an object-oriented design to promote extensibility and model reuse. FOREST uses a new design pattern, called the Event-Handler pattern, that allows modelers to extend a class hierarchy without modifying or recompiling existing code. The Event-Handler pattern also simplifies the process of adding or changing the implementation of an event, which can be useful during the calibration phase of model development. The development environment consists of tools for defining classes of individuals and events, infrastructure for building individual-based models (IBM), and graphic visualizations for interpreting and analyzing results.