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Oliver Mannion wrote Hi there, We are a University based research centre embarking on the development of a microsimulation model of health outcomes using empirical longitudinal data. The end product will be a software program for use by external end users. Our complete list of requirements is attached. Hello Oliver, I am a Ph.D student and I used NetLogo to set up a demographic microsimulation of the UK population. Data files at the household and individual level are read in from external files. The simulation then runs by calculating annual transition probabilities for births, deaths partnership formation and dissolution based on logistic regression equations. The model is updated each year which corresponds to one tick. It is a stochastic simulation and agents are cloned by using a simple command. A range of graphs and simple statistical functions are available. The simulation runs on a desktop computer and takes about one minute for each simulated year with a population of 10,000 individuals within 5,000 households. NetLogo was originally designed for use in education so the programming language is very straightforward. Simple models can be set up within a few days of installing the software but the language is quite powerful and did not limit the functionality of the model. The package and language are well documented and there is an active user community for support if needed however I did not require any because the language was so easy to use. That seems to cover most of your requirements except that I have not implemented setting parameters from outside the program. I assume it could be done by reading in from a text file. Output to a stats package could be done by writing to a text file from the model them importing this into the external program. There was some talk a while ago about the authors moving towards making NetLogo open source but as far as I know, this has not been done yet. Hope this is helpful. The NetLogo website is http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ <https://exchange5.essex.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/> . There is an early prototype of my model at http://istr.essex.ac.uk/tasc/students/tlawso/model2/ <https://exchange5.essex.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://istr.essex.ac.uk/tasc/students/tlawso/model2/> Regards, Tony Lawson ________________________________ From: News and discussion about computer simulation in the social sciences on behalf of Oliver Mannion Sent: Thu 25/06/2009 22:06 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [SIMSOC] Microsimulation Software Selection Hi there, We are a University based research centre embarking on the development of a microsimulation model of health outcomes using empirical longitudinal data. The end product will be a software program for use by external end users. Our complete list of requirements is attached. We are currently in the software selection phase. Modgen and AnyLogic are impressive packages in features and scope and would allow us to do most of what we want with the least effort "out of the box". We are concerned however that being closed source neither will allow 100% flexibility. Of the open source packages, Repast Simphony and Ascape have caught our attention as mature tool kits, although oriented towards Agent Based Modelling. We would therefore need to extend them to include input of parameter and base data files. Of these Repast has the higher public profile and more widespread usage. However Repast offers a lot of functionality we don't need, at the cost of quite a bit of complexity which makes it more difficult to understand the code and extend it. We would be grateful for any responses to the following questions: 1) Has anyone used Ascape for microsimulation? Is it widely used? Was it a good fit for your project? 2) What tool kits, if any, have you used for microsimulation? Or have you written your microsimulation without the use of a 3rd party tool kit/package? 3) If you have used Repast for microsimulation, what has been your experience with it? Thanks and regards, Oliver Mannion Programmer COMPASS - Centre of Methods and Policy Application in the Social Sciences www.compass.auckland.ac.nz The University of Auckland, New Zealand Phone +(649) 373 7999 ext 89760