Domain+Specific+Language

A number of functions have been developed to assist model developers in producing agent models to be run within the Trails Forward environment, and primarily reside on the 'Agent' class. 'Agent' is a predefined type of Ruby class defined in the Trails Forward code, and agents to be included in the simulations should be developed as a subclass of the Agent class. By developing specific agents as a subclass of 'Agent', the new agent class inherits access to a library of functionality that has been developed for the Agent class. These functions are described below.

= = =Agent functions developed in Ruby=

= = =Scratchpad of ideas for included functionality=


 * local spread function -** determines how organisms simulated using a top-down (univariate) approach can spread from one cell to their neighbors. Should take arguments for the number of individuals to be redispersed, the neighborhood to which they are redispersed (von Neumann/4-cell or Moore/8-cell), the distance they might disperse from their origin (integer, # of cells), maybe probability distribution options that describe the falloff with distance (ie. uniform, normal, cauchy, negative exponential)?