2007 CaGIS Student Paper Award

Wenwu Tang of the Department of Geography, University of Iowa, received the 2007 CaGIS Student Paper Award at the UCGIS Summer Assembly.  Mr. Tang’s paper, entitled “Development of a Spatially-explicit Agent-based Simulation Package for Modeling Complex Adaptive Geographic Systems” was selected from among six student papers presented at the meeting. 

The objective of the paper is:

 “… to present a spatially-explicit agent-based simulation package for the exploration of complex adaptive geographic systems. Agents that drive these systems are often geographically-aware and intelligent. The representation of these agents requires the integration of agent-based models, machine learning, and GIS. Existing software packages for agent-based modeling, however, often provide insufficient support for this integration. The agent-based simulation package presented here is specifically designed to achieve such integration. Object-oriented modeling techniques were used to implement this simulation package, which includes four modules: simulation, visualization, learning, and geoprocessing. In particular, the learning and geoprocessing modules facilitate the representation of adaptive behavior of agents within spatially-explicit environment. I illustrate the utility of the agent-based simulation package through a simulation model of adaptive behavior of elk. The successful design of the elk model suggests that the software package is well-suited to the representation of complex adaptive geographic problems.”

This award includes a cash prize of $200 and immediate review of the paper for publication in the Cartography and Geographic Information Science journal, the official publication of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS).

On behalf of CaGIS, we extend our congratulations to Mr. Tang on his accomplishment.