NL4Py: Agent-based modeling in Python with parallelizable NetLogo workspaces

Abstract

External control of agent-based models is vital for complex adaptive systems research. Often these experiments require vast numbers of simulation runs and are computationally expensive. NetLogo is the language of choice for most agent-based modelers but lacks direct API access through Python. NL4Py is a Python package for the parallel execution of NetLogo simulations via Python, designed for speed, scalability, and simplicity of use. NL4Py provides access to the large number of open-source machine learning and analytics libraries of Python and enables convenient and efficient parallelization of NetLogo simulations with minimal coding expertise by domain scientists