The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk ) has been around for 13 years, and it has become increasingly important for analytic journalists who believe that simulation modeling is — and increasingly will be — an keystone perspective for serious, value-added journalism.  And it's one of the FREE e-journals available.  Support it if you can. 

In the meantime, if you're not familiar with agent-based modeling, check out this article by Lynne Hamill; it will point you to some useful concepts and tools:

Agent-Based Modelling: The Next 15 Years

by Lynne Hamill

http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/13/4/7.html  

Abstract

This short note makes recommendations for the future direction of research in agent-based modelling (ABM). It is a personal view based on my experience as a policy adviser who has recently come to ABM. I suggest that to promote the use of ABM, the ABM community needs demonstrate the value of modelling to other social scientists by showing-by-doing and offering training projects; and to produce tools, guidance on good-practice and basic building blocks. Then the policy contexts most likely to benefit from ABM need to be identified along with any new data requirements, so that the usefulness of ABM can be demonstrated to policy analysts. This is, in my view, the challenge facing the ABM community for the next 15 years.