The diffusion of information is defined as the communication process by which an idea or information spreads within a social system and impacts the behavior of social actors (individuals). The social interaction plays an important role in studying the propagation of information and how it influences people. When an informational event occurs, it can either die out quickly or have significant impact on a population. The interactions could be supported by physical proximity contact, remote collaboration, any type of social meetings, and some forms of verbal or written communication, depending on the situations. Institutions and firms search to understand and predict the impact of information propagation on individuals. Agent-based modeling is a powerful approach for studying such a collective process. However, existing models oversimplify the cultural attributes, the different types of links, and information content, despite the evidence of their central role in the diffusion process. In this context, great benefits could be derived from the exploitation of an individual's personality and cultural values in the diffusion models. In this paper, we describe a new architecture for an agent-based model using the DEVS (Discrete Event System Specification) framework and show how this architecture is flexible and can support the simulation of the dissemination process. In more detail, we define a set of models of individuals characterized by a set of state variables to represent the behavior of an individual and the individual's network within a multi-layer social network. Then, we start by introducing the platform architecture, specifically designed to simulate message propagation in a multi-layer network. Finally, a military scenario of message diffusion during a stabilization phase is used to test our DEVS models on the platform and the relevancy of the simulation results.

The adoption of business processes (BP) can help healthcare providers in structuring the way information systems and people have to interact. Business process management (BPM) is a methodology that structures a way of representing system processes. At the same time, the human resources are organized in identified or implicit structures that allows individuals to exchange information either related to their work function or not. Nevertheless, the human organizations structure and communication channels are not, up to now, fully captured by the information systems. It may lead to losing part of the useful information exchanged by participants. Accordingly, this article focuses on multi-agent solutions representing social networks in the healthcare domain associated with BPM of patient pathways. The purpose is to study the feasibility of combining BP with agent-based models in order to better improve performance, manage resources, and ensure coordination between them.

Modeling and Simulation is attempting to tackle more and more complex systems, which makes their design highly challenging. Complex systems' Modeling and Simulation (M&S) require the consideration of several simultaneous points of view and involve skills from different scientific and technical fields. Distributed Simulation domain answer the question of coupling and running together heterogeneous components, e.g. IEEE 1516-2010 - High Level Architecture is one of the most used standard. Also, Functional Mockup Interface provide standard designed for the coupling of simulation tools (simulator coupling, tool coupling), and coupling with subsystem models, which have been exported by their simulators together with its solvers as runnable code. In this paper, we aim to provide bridge between HLA and FMI standard in order to couple those technologies.

This article aims to respond to growing concerns about sustainable urbanisation, which in recent years have generated a need for prospective assessment in the field of transport and land-use planning, by predicting future land-use development. We introduce a land use model (part LU of a land use transport interaction model) which aims to simulate households and economic activities location choice within an urban system. We use the agent-based approach to simulate location choices to account for land use changes and to estimate residential and economic activities location. This is a dynamic bottom-up approach with the households and the firms as their basic components. The MUST-B model considers the agents' location choices according to the utility theory and the equilibrium between real estate supply and demand. The model is used to simulate urban land-use development in the urban area of Bordeaux, France.

Due to increasing complexity of engineered system of systems, development of software to design and support them must tend to be more and more concurrent and distributed. To more easily tackle these systems design, global problem is decomposed into several sub-ones where each sub problem is allocated and solved by different contributors. Each participant develops a fragment of the global solution that need after to be integrated with other ones. In this paper we present an extension to the UML/BPMN modeling and simulation tool: Papyrus. This module allows to factor complex tasks during the modelling step and simulation execution process. In detail, we propose to add risk management and other potential interruptions features to BPMN models and Simulation. This is made possible according to Functional Mock-up Interface standard, a co-simulation standard that define how to orchestrate components while simulation execution process.

Modeling and Simulation (M&S) is attempting to tackle more and more complex systems, which makes its design highly challenging. Complex systems' M&S requires the consideration of several simultaneous points of view and involve skills from different scientific and technical fields. Distributed Simulation domain answers the question of coupling and running together heterogeneous components, e.g. IEEE 1516-2010-High Level Architecture is one of the most used standard. However, none provides any official or at least recognized user-friendly (e.g. graphical) language to specify distributed simulation desired behavior. Due to its capacity to represent behavior of processes, Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard could be an interesting solution for defining HLA execution scenario within a Model Driven Architecture approach. This paper aims to support the modeling phase of the HLA execution process in order to explicitly design the desired steps of orchestration between distributed HLA federates through the interpretation of a business process diagram.

Modeling and Simulation are becoming more and more complex, making their design very challenging. Modeling and Simulation of complex systems requires simultaneous consideration of several points of view and the study of these systems needs skills belonging to different scientific fields. In Distributed Simulation domain, IEEE 1516-2010 - High Level Architecture (HLA) is one of the most used standard. However, it does not provide any official graphical language for defining distributed simulation behaviors. Business Process Model and Notation standard could be an interesting solution for defining HLA execution scenario. This paper present application experiment applied to solar power plant. Our proposition consists in restrict the HLA execution process in order to use one federate as Master, controlling the others as Slaves. This allows us to generate a component responsible for the simulation execution process with parsing a Business Process Model and Notation diagram. In this paper, we present an application of this concept.

This article aims to respond to growing concerns about sustainable urbanization, which in recent years have generated a need for prospective assessment in the field of transport and land-use planning, by predicting future land-use development. We introduce a Land Use model (part LU of a Land Use Transport Interaction model) which aims to simulate households and firms location choice within an urban system. We use the agent-based approach to simulate location choices in order to account for land use changes and to estimate residential and economic activities location. This is a dynamic bottom-up approach with the households and the firms as their basic components. The MUST-B model considers the agents' location choices according to the utility theory and the equilibrium between real estate supply and demand. The model is used to simulate urban land-use development in the urban area of Bordeaux, France.

The adoption of Process (BP) can deal the (re)development of process, for instance it can help healthcare providers structuring the system and people have to interact. Business Process Management (BPM) is known as a methodology that aims to give a structured way of processes of systems. At the same time, the resources are organized in identified or implicit structures that allows individual to exchange information either related to their work function or not. Nevertheless, the human organizations structure and communication channels are not, up to now, fully captured by the systems. It may lead to lose part of useful exchanged by participants. Accordingly, this paper focuses on multi-agent solutions representing social networks in the healthcare domain associated with BPM of patient pathways. The purpose is to combine BP with agent-based models in order to better improve performance and manage resources.

Healthcare organizations are facing huge daily challenges which led them trying to give the best solutions in order to manage their resources and deliver a best quality of services. The recent adoption of Business Process Management (BPM) in healthcare organizations is dealing with the development of performance indicators in this domain to help healthcare providers structuring the interaction of information between systems and people. Moreover, there are a lot of available methods and tools for BPM that afford different manners to simulate models. Nevertheless in these process models, the resource handling is frequently missing or it is defined in a simplistic way. In this paper, we present the application of BPM in healthcare sector, using the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), coupled with a multi-dimensional Agent Based Model (ABM) of multidimensional organizational network of resources and geographical positioned population on a territory.

The social influence is at the centre of consideration in social science. In industrial engineering, although the enterprise has reached the age of the electronic communication, the human direct communication is not sufficiently considered even if it remains critical communication vector to transmit information. The idea is to predict some human attributes behaviour that will help enterprise to make efficient decision. The research in the domain gives significant results but the impact of information on individuals within a social network is, mostly, statically modelled where the dynamic aspect is not frequently tackled. The individual׳s reaction to a change within an organisation or ecosystem (implementation of a new system, new security instructions…etc.) is not always rationale. The opinion of individuals is influenced by information gathered about the attributes of the technology from other members of their social network. In addition, the works about modelling and simulation of the population’s reactions to an event do not use explicit specification languages to support their models. A behavioural specification model is one critical missing link. Adding a clear behavioural model can help for specification verification and reuse. From literature, the DEVS formalism (Discrete EVent system Specifications) appears to be general enough to represent such dynamical systems (Zeigler et al., 2000). It provides operational semantics applicable to this domain. The contributions of this work are dynamic models of individuals using low-level language to simulate the propagation of information among a group of individuals and its influence on their behaviour. In more detail, we define a set of models of individuals characterized by a set of state variables and the mesh between the individuals within a social network. Then, we introduce the information diffusion based on epidemic spreading algorithms and we transpose them into the case of the message propagation in a social network. Finally, a basic scenario is used to give a beginning of validation to our models using a platform based on DEVS formalism.

L’étude des phénomènes de la diffusion d’information à grand échelle est un domaine récent. La diffusion d’information est définie comme le processus de communication par lequel une idée ou une information se propage dans une population et qui peut impacter le comportement des individus. Les institutions, tout comme les entreprises, cherchent à comprendre et à prévoir l’impact de la propagation d’information sur les individus. Une approche de modélisation et simulation permet de mieux comprendre ce processus social et de répondre à ces questions. La modélisation et la simulation à base d’agents offre une approche puissante pour modéliser un tel processus social. Toutefois, les modèles actuels simplifient fortement les facteurs culturels et les informations représentées dans le modèle ainsi que les différents liens interconnectant les individus. Ces éléments sont centraux et déterminants pour le processus de propagation. Afin d'améliorer les modèles de propagation, nous explorons dans cette thèse une représentation de la population plus réaliste. Nous proposons une architecture de modélisation et simulation permettant de simuler les phénomènes de propagation au sein des réseaux sociaux multiplexes et dynamiques basée sur le formalisme DEVS.

This paper deals with diffusion process in a multi-layer network using DEVS (Discrete Event System Specification) formalism. Social interaction plays an important role in studying the propagation of information, innovation, ideas, and influence among its members. When an informational event appears it can either die out quickly or makes significant inroads into a population. Network diffusion process allows us to understand the dynamics and the propagation of information in Social Network (SN). These networks can consist of individuals, group of person or organizations. The interactions could be done by physical proximity contact, remote collaboration, any types of social meetings and some forms of verbal or written communication depending on the situations. In our work we use the DEVS formalism, extended by DS-DEVS and PDEVS in order to set to simulate the propagation phenomena within a multi-layer social network (MSN). The network agent behavior is represented in the form of atomic models or coupled models if they are complex, and the social network is managed using DS-DEVS.

Recent disasters have shown the need to improve emergency plans and the importance of the communications while managing the emergency. These communications can be modeled as an information transmission problem in multiplex social networks in which agents interact through multiple interaction channels (layers). Here, we propose a hybrid model combining Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS), Network theory and Monte Carlo Simulation. We explore how the information spread from agents in an emergency plan taking into account several communication channels. We developed formal and simulation models of information dissemination in such emergency plans. We reuse a model architecture based on ABM, DEVS & Network Theory taking into account the behavior of the nodes in the network and the different transmission mechanisms in the layers. Finally, we execute a scenario to observe the communications using a DEVS network modeling platform powered by VLE.

The impacts of information on individuals within a social network are, mostly, statically modeled and the dynamic is not frequently tackled. In addition, the works about modeling and simulation of the populations reactions to the information do not use explicit specification languages to describe their models. These models are specified in the shape of graph or math formulas and then directly implemented and coded using classical programming languages. We propose to model, in the frame of SICOMORES project studying stabilization phase of a conflict, the actions of influence in a multidimensional social networks (MSN). Each graph dimension corresponds to a predetermined social network (Family, religion, neighborhood). The purpose of this work is to provide a simple but efficient and accurate framework to model the behavior of an individual, but also the simulation of the propagation of information among a group of individuals and its influence on their behavior. In more details, we define a set of models of individuals characterized by a set of state variables (e.g. Using Maslow to construct the behavior of an individual) and the mesh between the individuals within a social network. Then, we introduce the platform architecture, sharing resources, specifically designed to simulate MSN. In the end, a scenario is used to validate our models using the platform based on DEVS formalism.

The impact of information on individuals within a social network is, mostly, statically modeled and the dynamic is not frequently tackled. In addition, the work of modeling and simulation of the population's reactions to the information do not use explicit specification languages to describe their models. These models are specified in the shape of graph or math formulas and then directly implemented and coded using classical programming languages. We propose to model the actions of influence in a multidimensional social network (MSN). Each graph layer corresponds to a predetermined social network based on one relationship. In this work, the use of the DEVS formalism has permitted to explicit M&S of human behavior and the interaction between individuals as a network. In more detail, we define a set of models of individuals characterized by a set of state variables (e.g., using Maslow's theory [15] to construct the behavior of an individual) and the mesh between the individuals within a social network. Then, we introduce the platform architecture, sharing resources, specifically designed to simulate MSN. In the end, a scenario is used to validate our models using the platform based on DEVS Specification.