A model-driven framework for developing multi-agent systems in emergency response environments

In emergency response environments, variant entities with specific behaviors and interaction between them form a complex system that can be well modeled by multi-agent systems. To build such complex systems, instead of writing the code from scratch, one can follow the model-driven development approach, which aims to generate software from design models automatically. To achieve this goal, two important prerequisites are: a domain-specific modeling language for designing an emergency response environment model, and transformation programs for automatic code generation from a model. In addition, for modeling with the language, a modeling tool is required, and for executing the generated code there is a need to a platform. In this paper, a model-driven framework for developing multi-agent systems in emergency response environments is provided which includes several items. A domain-specific modeling language as well as a modeling tool is developed for this domain. The language and the tool are called ERE-ML and ERE-ML Tool, respectively. Using the ERE-ML Tool, a designer can model an emergency response situation and then validate the model against the predefined constraints. Furthermore, several model to code transformations are defined for automatic multi-agent system code generation from an emergency response environment model. For executing the generated code, an extension of JAMDER platform is also provided. To evaluate our framework, several case studies including the Victorian bushfire disaster are modeled to show the ability of the framework in modeling real-world situations and automatic transformation of the model into the code.