Vahana - A framework (not only) for large-scale agent-based models

Vahana is a high-performance, agent-based modelling library developed in Julia, specifically (but not only) designed for large-scale simulations of complex social networks. It leverages the power of Graph Dynamical Systems, coupled with advanced parallel computing methodologies, to provide a robust framework for the exploration of network-based systems.

Key Features

• Efficient and Scalable: Vahana uses Message Passing Interface (MPI) for distributed memory parallelism, allowing for efficient scaling to thousands of cores.

• Expressive Interface: Despite its high-performance capabilities, Vahana is designed with an accessible and expressive interface, making the construction of complex models intuitive and easy.

• Network-Oriented Approach: Vahana's design focuses on network dynamics, making it an excellent tool for simulations involving complex interactions and dependencies between agents.

• Graph Dynamical Systems: Leveraging the principles of Graph Dynamical Systems, Vahana provides a solid theoretical foundation for modelling agent-based systems.

• Integration into the Julia Ecosystem: Vahana interacts seamlessly with other Julia libraries, such as DataFrames and Graphs.

• HDF5 Data Persistence: For efficient data storage and access, Vahana utilises the Hierarchical Data Format version 5 (HDF5), including optional support for parallel HDF5.

Installation

You can install Vahana in Julia using the following command:

using Pkg
Pkg.add("Vahana")

If you want to run a simulation in parallel, it is useful to also read the configuration/installation sections of the MPI.jl and HDF5.jl libraries.

Documentation

Full documentation, including tutorials, guides, and API references, is available here.

A JuliaCon 2023 Pre-recorded Video about Vahana is available here.

The preprint of a Vahana.jl paper is available here

Citation

If you use this package in a publication, or simply want to refer to it, please cite the paper below:

@article{vahana2024,
  title={Vahana.jl - A framework (not only) for large-scale agent-based models},
  author={F{\"u}rst, Steffen and Conrad, Tim and Jaeger, Carlo and Wolf, Sarah},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.14441},
  year={2024},
  doi={10.48550/arXiv.2406.14441},
  url={https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2406.14441},
  eprint={2406.14441},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.MA}
}

Acknowledgments

This research has been partially funded under Germany’s Excellence Strategy, MATH+ : The Berlin Mathematics Research Center (EXC-2046/1), project no. 390685689

License

Vahana is distributed under the MIT license. For more information, please refer to the LICENSE file in this repository.