Industrial ecological system is a sustainable mode of modern industry development. Industrial symbiosis

a sub-field of industrial ecology

engages traditionally separate industries in a collective approach

involving exchange of materials

energy

water

and/or by-products

to enhance competitive ability and environmental performance. To construct a symbiosis analysis method

this article employs a number of parameters embodying information about materials

energy and economics as the main essential parameters in system analysis and introduces symbiosis profit and symbiotic consumption elements as the economic indicators. A modeling and simulation program is designed using the agent-based modeling approach to simulate the evolvement of a hypothetical coal-based industrial system and the change of symbiosis conditions in the process of construction is examined. The simulation program built using the Swarm library

which is a freely available multi-agent simulation package

provides a useful demonstration for the symbiosis analysis method.