Process Ordering in a Process Calculus for Spatially-Explicit Ecological Models

In this paper we extend palps, a process calculus proposed for the spatially-explicit individual-based modeling of ecological systems, with the notion of a policy. A policy is an entity for specifying orderings between the different activities within a system. It is defined externally to a palps model as a partial order which prescribes the precedence order between the activities of the individuals of which the model is comprised. The motivation for introducing policies is twofold: one the one hand, policies can help to reduce the state-space of a model; on the other hand, they are useful for exploring the behavior of an ecosystem under different assumptions on the ordering of events within the system. To take account of policies, we refine the semantics of palps via a transition relation which prunes away executions that do not respect the defined policy. Furthermore, we propose a translation of palps into the probabilistic model checker prism. We illustrate our framework by applying prism on palps models with policies for conducting simulation and reachability analysis.