Software, Data and Modelling NewsNetLogo meets R: Linking agent-based models with a toolbox for their analysis
Section snippets
Software availability
Name of the software: NetLogo-R-Extension
Availability: Software and documentation are available at http://netlogo-r-ext.berlios.de
Developers: Jan C. Thiele
Year first available: 2010
Software required: Sun Java (JRE/JDK version 1.5 and higher), NetLogo 4.x, Gnu R (2.6 or higher), rJava package for R
Operation systems: Windows, Linux
Programming language: Java
License: GNU GPL with Linking Exception
New primitives
NetLogo’s programming language consists of a large number of commands, or “primitives”. Our R extension adds only nine primitives (see documentation and http://netlogo-r-ext.berlios.de/article_resources.php). The new primitives provide means for sending data from NetLogo to R and vice versa, for evaluating any R command (with the exception mentioned above) and for observing the processes.
Examples
Three examples, which are included in the online attachment (http://netlogo-r-ext.berlios.de/article_resources.php), illustrate how our R extension of NetLogo can be used. The NetLogo program code in the listings contains only the parts where the R extension is used. The complete programs are provided in the examples folder of our R extension of NetLogo.
In the first example, (http://netlogo-r-ext.berlios.de/listing2.php) the R extension is used in the setup procedure to get random values from a
Concluding remarks
Both NetLogo and R are powerful tools with growing user communities. In the fields of agent-based modelling and statistics, respectively, they are increasingly considered as standard software platforms. Combining these tools to tackle environmental and ecological problems provides many benefits. NetLogo users can utilize the power of R without needing to communicate via data files. This offers new and fascinating opportunities to analyse agent-based models interactively and to implement
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