A taxonomy for agent-based models in human infectious disease epidemiology

Agent-based simulation modelling has been used in many epidemiological studies on infectious diseases. However, because agent based modelling is a field without any clear protocol for developing simulations the researcher is given a high amount of flexibility. This flexibility has led to many different forms of agent-based epidemiological simulations. In this paper we review the existing literature on agent-based epidemiological simulation models. From our literature review we identify key similarities and differences in the existing simulations. We then use these similarities and differences to create a taxonomy of agent-based epidemiological models and show how the taxonomy can be used.