Hi Yuseung Kim, I barely started my technical evaluation of MASON...but the answer to your first question is (theoretically), yes. An open source (Java-based) project called, GeoTools (now on its second release) has more than enough stable classes to read, display, manipulate and save digital maps. The project URL where you can download the required files is at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/geotools/. I'm not sure if we have similar requirements but I am developing routines to use spatial data (ESRI Shapefiles) to initialize our ABMs (automatically create agents and set attributes) and forecast the range of possibilities from these known conditions -- to make the results useful to resource managers. At this early stage, I find the architecture of MASON easy to deal with and I do not foresee problems in incorporating such utilities. I will share my routines with the core MASON developers/users if and when I have stable versions that other MASON users can use. Cheers, Felimon C. Gayanilo, Jr. Senior Software Engineer National Center for Caribbean Coral Reef Research (NCORE) University of Miami - Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, Florida 33149 USA ph: (305) 421 4828 fax: (305) 421 4910 URL: http://ncore.rsmas.miami.edu -----Original Message----- From: MASON Multiagent Simulation Toolkit [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Yuseung Kim Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 4:56 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Mason and GIS I started mason and have some questions. How can I use GIS data with Mason? Can I make agents from shape file? It would be great if there are some packages for using GIS with mason. Thanks.