[GRASSLIST:4069] dynamic modeling advice?

[Alex Thorn]

Hello once more.

A while back I posted asking for general information
on
how one goes about creating dynamic models using
GRASS.
My master's project involves spatially explicit, 
individual-based modeling of waterfowl movements.

I've now gotten more into the meat of what I am doing,
have figured out how scripting works, and have done a
little bit of work using scripts to hand raster and
site
data (I'm currently playing with modeling the birds as
sites) to C programs and then back to GRASS.

I'm now considering what portions of the analysis 
should be performed by GRASS, and what portions it 
would be more appropriate to use the C programs for.  
I'm finding that much of the spatial manipulation
that I need (for example, the direction to-nearest-
object problem that I was asking about yesterday)
to do could be done by the C program fairly easily 
without involving GRASS at all.  It seems that it
might even be possible only using GRASS to display the
output.  Meanwhile, it seems clear that every use 
of GRASS for a spatial calculation slows down the
program runtime because of the necessity to create 
support files for the resulting coverages.

I'm wondering whether any of you who may have created
or worked with GIS-linked dynamic models might have 
words of wisdom on striking the balance between use 
of GRASS and and use of outside code for creating a 
smoothly working model, while taking full advantage
of the power built into GRASS.

Thanks,
Alex

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