With recent advances in computational power, the investigation of complex and evolving systems with numerical methods became more and more feasible. This research developed a wide range of modelling techniques for said systems, most notably cellular automata, agent-based models, and network models. Scientists typically develop, implement, and analyze their models to address their specific research questions with a lower focus on software usability, transparency, and portability. In our group, this lead to many new researchers re-writing models from scratch instead of using and improving existing models. To resolve the problem, we developed Utopia, a modelling framework that provides facilities for the mentioned modelling techniques and includes the developed models themselves to be shared and improved within our group.

In this talk, we outline the modelling approaches for complex and evolving systems, demonstrate the need for synergies on both the abstract and implementation level, and introduce the Utopia framework. It coheres with the second talk on Utopia scheduled for 6 February 2020.