MAS&S'09

Multi-agent systems provide powerful models for representing real-world systems and applications with an appropriate degree of complexity and dynamics. When a MAS is a software application to be delivered it has to be validated before deployment, which calls for methodologies supporting validation through simulation; and where a MAS is a model of a complex system, executing the model is how the behaviour of the individual entities at the micro level is turned into an understanding of the system-level outcome. In both readings simulation is central, and MAS&S was the workshop that took it as its subject. The third edition, subtitled *Towards an Integration of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering and Simulation*, ran inside the MALLOW federated workshops in Turin. Selected papers were invited to a special issue on simulation-based design and evaluation of multi-agent systems in Elsevier's Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory.

• Agent-based simulation techniques and methodologies
• Discrete-event simulation of Multi-Agent Systems
• Simulation as validation tool for the development process of MAS
• Agent-oriented methodologies incorporating simulation tools
• MAS simulation driven by formal models
• MAS simulation toolkits and frameworks
• Testing vs. simulation of MAS
• Industrial case studies based on MAS and simulation/testing
• Agent-based Modeling and Simulation (ABMS)
• Agent Computational Economics (ACE)
• Agent Computational Finance (ACF)
• Agent-based simulation of networked systems
• Scalability in agent-based simulation