Overview of the ODD Protocol Development Process as a Standard for Agent-Based Modeling

Ecological and social science researchers have long faced the challenge of modeling the intrinsic complexity of socio-ecological systems. A popular approach to understand and investigate these systems is agent-based modeling, which has been used not only in ecological sciences but in many other disciplines over the years and has become a widely used tool nowadays. Despite the importance of this modeling approach, there was no standard protocol to make and present these models by 2006. Hence, several expert modelers who covered a wide range of areas in ecology suggested the ODD protocol (Overview, design concepts, and details) as a standard for describing individual-based models (e.g., agent-based models) in 2006. After that, some providers of the first version of the ODD protocol have developed an updated version of this protocol in 2010 to resolve problems and ambiguities of the original version, as an alternative for the previous version, by reviewing research that used this protocol. Then, considering the fundamental role of human decisions in agent-based modeling, a new version of this protocol named ODD+D was introduced in 2013, specifically for this modeling approach. The purpose of the ODD+D protocol was the development and modification of the ODD protocol to create a standard for describing agent-based models so that it can consider human decision-making within itself. Due to the importance of applying this protocol in the structure of agent-based modeling studies, the present research introduces the ODD protocol, reviews its evolution over recent years, and addresses the detailed description of different versions.