MWGrid: A System for Distributed Agent-based Simulation in the Digital Humanities

Digital Humanities offer a new exciting domain for agent-based distributed simulation. In historical studies interpretation rarely rises above the level of unproven assertion and is rarely tested against a range of evidence. Agent-based simulation can provide an opportunity to break these cycles of academic claim and counterclaim. The MWGrid framework utilises distributed agent-based simulation to study medieval military logistics. As a use-case, it has focused on the logistical analysis of the Byzantine army's march to the battle of Manzikert (AD 1071), a key event in medieval history. It integrates an agent design template, a transparent, layered mechanism to translate model-level agents' actions to timestamped events and the PDES-MAS distributed simulation kernel. The paper presents an overview of the MWGrid system and a quantitative evaluation of its perfomance.