introductions

[Paul W. Box]

A few weeks ago, Chris Langton posted a message to this group that
people introduce themselves as a way of getting traffic started.  I had
allowed the message to pass as I am a couple of weeks away from a (much
belated) dissertation defense, and I have placed all extraneous
activities on hold until that detail is taken care of.

However, it seems silly to have this potentially great list sitting here
with no activity.  I am very excited about having a swarm/gis
interface.  I downloaded the demo soon after this list was created, and
found that it was written for an older, beta version of swarm.  I
figured a good introduction to the package would be translating the demo
to conform to the release version of swarm, and making that available to
the list.  I still plan to do that after my defense if no-one else has
done it.

As for my introduction:  I am in the final throes of completing my
dissertation here at University of Florida.  After things are completed
here, I will be moving to my home town of Logan Utah, where I will start
as an assistant prof. at Utah State University College of Natural
Resources this fall.  Along with the introductory GIS and spatial
analysis courses, I am very interested in starting a course in spatial
simulation, and would like to have swarm and grass be the teaching
tools.  I got the impression that there was quite a bit of interest in
haveing such a course, but we will have to see if that interest is still
there when time comes to create an actual course.

For research goals, I am very interested in using autonomous agents in a
GIS-generated landscape for exploring questions of resource management,
both in recreation and in subsistence use of the land.  I am only aware
of a few others who have approached this problem, and I believe they all
happen to be members of this list.  I would very much like to hear what 
others are doing with swarm and gis.

I will post more after the defense (naturally after the requesite few
days of post-defense inebriation).  In the meantime, let's hear from
others on the list!

-- 
/**********************************************************************/
/*  Paul Box                      |        Cogito ergo                */
/*  Dept. of Geography            |      Oculum Dioscoreum            */
/*  University of Florida         |                                   */
/*  address@hidden   |     (I think, therefor            */
/*  http://grove.ufl.edu/~sanduku |           eye yam)                */
/*                                |                                   */
/**********************************************************************/

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