Engineering open environments for multi-agent simulation systems

In this work, we present the idea that agents and the environment play an equally important role in MAS design and propose an architecture for Agent Environment System (AES). We consider environments as first class entities and propose a specification, design and implementation of the DIVAs environment. DIVAs is a large scale multi-agent simulation tool in which agents represent social entities and the environment an artificial world. Our architecture is based on software engineering concepts such as separation of concerns, modularity and information hiding. This leads to adaptable systems that can support multiple application domains. We discuss a Specification and a Simulation Tool that illustrate the applicability of our results to various problems.