GeoInformatics.cc

The models described in this course will be developed using TerraME. TerraME is an extension of the Lua language. Some useful documents about TerraME:

• Experiences with a Socio-Environmental Modeling Course, //Modelling in Science Education and Learning//, 2014
• TerraME:An extensible toolbox for modelling nature-society interactions, //Environmental Modelling and Software//, 2013

Students should read the TerraME EMS and the MREL papers first, to get a sense of the language and what we are going to teach. The next step is to learn the basics of Lua, which is a simple and elegant programming language. Good references on Lua are:

• Lua - an extensible extension language, by R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, W. Celes, //Software: Practice & Experience//, 26 #6 (1996) 635–652.
• A one-pager introduction to Lua (very good!)
• The Lua book by Roberto Ierusalimschy (excellent!)
• Lua for TerraME: A Short Introduction

Please first install the TerraME software, available at the TerraME github release site.

Please install TerraME in “C:\TerraME” in Windows.

To install TerraME on a MAC, please follow the instructions below:

1. Install homebrew, a package manager for MAC.
2. install qt5 using homebrew (%brew install qt5)
3. Download terrame-1.4-mac.tgz from TerraME website
4. Copy terrame-14.mac.tgz to /usr/local directory (as “sudo”)
5. In /usr/local directory, run the command “sudo tar xzvf terrame-1.4-mac.tgz”
6. Include the following lines in your “.profile”

    export TERRAME=/usr/local/terrame
    export TME_PATH=$TERRAME/bin 
    export PATH=$PATH:$TME_PATH
    export LUA_PATH="./?.lua;$TME_PATH/?.lua"
    export LUA_CPATH="$TME_PATH/?.so"

We suggest that you use ZeroBraneStudio as your programming environment for developing TerraME programs. In Windows, please install the program to C:\ZeroBraneStudio. In MAC and Linux, please use the default installation path.

After you download ZeroBraneStudio (ZBS), please do the following steps:

1. Configuration file: tells ZBS where to find the TerraME interpreter. Copy the user.lua configuration file to the “cfg” folder where you have installed ZBS. In Windows, it is usually “C:\ZeroBraneStudio\cfg”. In the MAC, the folder is “/Applications/ZeroBraneStudio.app/Contents/ZeroBraneStudio/cfg”. In Ubuntu, it is “/opt/zbstudio/cfg”.
2. Interpreter description file: tells ZBS how to use TerraME. Copy the terrame.lua interpreter description file to the “interpreters” folder where you have installed ZBS. In Windows, this folder is “C:\ZeroBraneStudio\interpreters”. In the MAC, it is “/Applications/ZeroBraneStudio.app/Contents/ZeroBraneStudio/interpreters”. In Ubuntu, it is /opt/zbstudio/interpreters.
3. Keyword description: tells ZBS to highlight both Lua and TerraME keywords. Copy the lua.lua keyword description file to the “spec” folder where you have installed ZeroBraneStudio. In Windows, this folder is “C:\ZeroBraneStudio\spec”.In the MAC, it is “/Applications/ZeroBraneStudio.app/Contents/ZeroBraneStudio/spec”. In Ubuntu, it is /opt/zbstudio/spec.
4. Optional: delete the other interpreters of ZeroBrane (Corona, Guideros, etc.) and leave only Lua, Lua5.2 and TerraME.

For this course, we are going to use additional packages:

• System Dynamics - a package for modelling system dynamic problems.
• SciTerraME - a package for scientific and statistical functions in TerraME.

To install these packages, please save the “zip” files to a folder in your computer. Run TerraME, click on the button “Install New Package” and select the files one by one.