A Distributed Platform for Global-Scale Agent-Based Models of Disease Transmission

Abstract

The Global-Scale Agent Model (GSAM) is presented. The GSAM is a high-performance distributed platform for agent-based epidemic modeling capable of simulating a disease outbreak in a population of several billion agents. It is unprecedented in its scale, its speed, and its use of Java. Solutions to multiple challenges inherent in distributing massive agent-based models are presented. Communication, synchronization, and memory usage are among the topics covered in detail. The memory usage discussion is Java specific. However, the communication and synchronization discussions apply broadly. We provide benchmarks illustrating the GSAM’s speed and scalability.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2011
Source ID
10.1145/2043635.2043637

Entities

People

  • Jon Parker
  • Joshua M. Epstein

Organizations

  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • National Institute of General Medical Sciences
  • National Institutes of Health
  • Office of Naval Research
  • University of Pittsburgh

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Infectious Disease/Epidemiology
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.