Building Mic-Core, a Specialized M&S Software to Simulate Multi-State Demographic Micro Models, Based on JAMES II, a General M&S Framework

Often new modeling and simulation software is developed from scratch with no or only little reuse. The benefits that can be gained from developing a modeling and simulation environment by using (and thus reusing components of) a general modeling and simulation framework refer to reliability and efficiency of the developed software, which eventually contributes to the quality of simulation experiments. Developing the tool Mic-Core which supports continuous-time micro modeling and simulation in demography based on the plug-in-based modeling and simulation framework JAMES II will illuminate some of these benefits of reuse. Thereby, we will focus on the development process itself and on the quality of simulation studies, e.g., by analyzing the impact of random number generators on the reliability of results and of event queues on efficiency. The "lessons learned" summary presents a couple of insights gained by using a general purpose framework for M&S as a base to create a specialized M&S software.