ML3: A language for compact modeling of linked lives in computational demography

Agent-based modeling and simulation is widely used in computational demography. Although existing agent-based approaches allow modeling linked lives in a rather flexible manner, the resulting models, due to typically being implemented in a general-purpose programming language, often lack the compactness required to easily access the model. With ML3 (Modeling Language for Linked Lives) we present a compact and expressive domain-specific modeling language for continuous-time agent-based models in computational demography. The language combines elements from guarded commands, process algebras, and rule-based approaches. We discuss and present the individual features of the language and illuminate its compactness by presenting the specification of an entire agent-based model from recent literature.