Simulation Modeling of Maritime Piracy using Discrete Event and Agent-Based Approaches

In the last decade, maritime piracy has affected the global economy that forced the countries to react. Most of the reaction is regarding force deployment in the affected regions. In this study, we present a simulation based analysis tool that aims at understanding the relationship between naval forces deployment and preventing piracy. We consider three stakeholders’ views; pirates, maritime transportation, and naval forces. We initially created a classical Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model and adopted event scheduling approach. However, later, we discovered that since the behaviours of entities, interaction between entities, and the autonomy properties of entities are significant, Agent Based Simulation (ABS) concepts are appropriate for modeling. Finally, we ended up with a hybrid DES and ABS model. Our conceptual model is created using event graphs and the model is implemented using SharpSim DES library. Additionally, we coupled an open source Geographic Information System (GIS), GreatMap, with SharpSim.