Mic-core: a tool for microsimulation

Microsimulation is an increasingly popular tool in the social sciences. Individual behavior is described by a (commonly stochastic) model and subsequently simulated to study outcomes on the aggregate level. Demographic projections are a prominent area of application. Despite numerous available tools often new software is designed and implemented for specific applications. In this paper we describe how a modeling and simulation framework, JAMES II, was used to create a specialized tool for population projections, the Mic-core. Reusing validated and well-tested modeling and simulation functionality significantly reduced development time while keeping performance levels high. We document how the Mic-core was built as plug-ins to JAMES II and illustrate the performance of the resulting tool. We demonstrate how the concept of a modeling and simulation framework enabled successful software reuse of available functionality and briefly report of future work.