Book Chapter
MIC-CORE: a tool for microsimulation
Zinn, S., Himmelspach, J.,
Gampe, J., Uhrmacher, A. M.
In: Rossetti, M. D., Hill, R. R., Johansson, B., Dunkin, A., Ingalls, R.G. (Eds.): Proceedings of the 2009 Winter Simulation Conference: December 13 - 16, 2009, Austin, Texas, U.S.A.; inclusion of MASM (Modeling and Analysis of Semiconductor Manufacturing)[CD-ROM]
Piscataway, NJ, IEEE (2009)
ISBN 978-1-424-45772-4
Abstract
Microsimulation is an increasingly popular tool in the social
sciences. Individual behavior is described by a (commonly stochastic)
model and subsequently simulated to study outcomes on the aggregate
level. Demographic projections are a prominent area of application.
Despite numerous available tools often new software is designed and
implemented for specific applications. In this paper we describe how a
modeling and simulation framework, JAMES, was used to create a
specialized tool for population projections, the Mic-Core.
Reusing validated and well-tested modeling and simulation
functionality significantly reduced development time while keeping
performance levels high. We document how the Mic-Core was built as
plug-ins to JAMES and illustrate the performance of the resulting
tool. We demonstrate how the concept of a modeling and simulation
framework enabled successful software reuse of available functionality and
briefly report of future work.
Keywords: microsimulation, projections, software