A DEVS model for demographic microsimulation
Microsimulation is increasingly applied in demography to project the development of populations. A stochastic model is being introduced that describes individual life courses on a continuous time base. Life courses are determined by sequences of demographic events. We show how this demographic multi-state projection model can be specified as an atomic model in DEVS. Thereby, strengths but also limitations of this approach are revealed. The limitations are addressed by exploiting a DEVS variant that supports variable structures, i.e., DYNPDEVS, and by modeling individuals as atomic models and the population as a network model. An example projection of a synthetical population based on the population of Italy shows the plausibility and the feasibility of the developed model.