Software library for agent-based modeling and simulation of active shooter events

Abstract

Software libraries have been used for decades to produce code in a quick and cost-effective manner. The use of well-designed libraries permits software developers and other professionals to create applications due in part to code reusability. Also, good libraries grant lesser skilled developers the opportunity to make high-quality applications they otherwise could not produce. In the field of active shooting incident (ASI) research, various tools have been used for years that give researchers the ability to conduct exploratory research. However, as good as these tools might be, there has been little thought about reusability of these models and associated code. This has hindered the proper advancement of the research field given that researchers must often start from nothing when building a new model. Constant repetition of the same basic tasks has not enabled researchers to expand model fidelity and has limited time to dedicate toward the problem set. This paper proposes the creation of a new agent-based ASI library, made for the AnyLogic® system. The library assists researchers in quickly creating models using a well-defined application programming interface. It also abstracts away implementation details so that the library user does not get waylaid in development. The authors also recreated parts of a large and powerful AnyLogic model to observe the resultant library employment. It was determined that a significant amount of time can be saved building new models, even with the initial version of the library implementation.