June 9, 2006 OTTAWA -

Dr. Barry Wellar, Professor of Geography (ret.), and Distinguished Geomatics Scientist,  LAGGISS, is the recipient of the 2006 Edward L. Ullman Award from the Association of American Geographers for “Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Transportation Geography”.

Dr. Wellar has earned international recognition as a leading researcher in the development of alternative transportation strategies that focus on walking, cycling and transit as opposed to trips by private motorized vehicle, and in the use of performance measurement techniques to evaluate transportation policies, plans and programs.

Major contributions by Prof. Wellar to transportation methodology include the development of indexes to measure how well signalized intersections serve the needs of pedestrians, the use of remote sensing technology to study transportation and land use relationships, the application of geographic information systems to study traffic patterns,  and the use of mathematical models to study the impacts of highway network expansions on volumes and distributions of diverted, induced and generated traffic.

Dr. Wellar is also internationally recognized for his pioneering work in demonstrating how media stories provide an important fact and opinion dimension to transportation studies in geography, as well as in such fields as planning, engineering, land economics, law, and public safety.

The Edward L. Ullman Award was created to honour the achievements of Professor Edward Ullman, University of Washington, who was one of the foremost transportation authorities in the United States. The Ullman award will be presented to Dr. Wellar at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Chicago.

(Barry Wellar was born in Latchford, Ontario. He attended Cobalt High School, and graduated from Queens University (B.A., Hon. B.A.) and Northwestern University (M.S. Ph.D.). He was an Assistant Professor and Research Associate at the University of Kansas, and a Senior Research Officer, Director, and Senior Policy Advisor at the federal Ministry of State for Urban Affairs. He joined the University of Ottawa in 1979 and retired in June 2005. He was named Distinguished Geomatics Scientist at LAGGISS in November 2005, and is President, Wellar Consulting Inc.)

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