Using Repast and Java to Enhance the Nom Project : a Report Summer 2003

Natural organic matter (NOM) is a heterogeneous mixture of organic molecules. NOM is very important in many ecological processes, but is often tough and slow to study in nature. The NOM simulator is a stochastic model of agent-based NOM behavior in a specific environment. This webbased simulator allows scientists around the world to conduct research by enabling them to submit, run, and observe their custom simulations. Providing a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows one to view the molecules as they move and react is valuable to the scientists. The NOM GUI enables scientists to see colorful and dynamic results and also graphs that are updated as a simulation runs. This research paper tells how the GUI was created and provides insight for its operation.