UVicSpace | Institutional Repository
UVicSpace is the University of Victoria’s open access scholarship and learning repository. It preserves and provides access to the digital scholarly works of UVic faculty, students, staff, and partners. Items in UVicSpace are organized into collections, each belonging to a community.
For more information about depositing items, see the Submission Guidelines.
Recent Submissions
Evolution of Rwanda's environmental laws and policies (2004-2024)
(University of Victoria, 2024) Charnia, Ayan
This research examines the evolution of Rwanda’s environmental policies from 2004 to 2024, focusing on how the country balances economic growth with sustainability and climate resilience. Rwanda’s dense population and small size increase pressure on natural resources. Key initiatives include the National Forest Policy (2004), Environmental Organic Law (2005), and the National Reforestation Program (2006), which rehabilitated deforested areas and promoted tree planting. Rwanda also emphasized community engagement through policies like Umuganda, encouraging public participation in environmental protection.
Additionally, Rwanda has developed progressive policies such as the National Environment and Climate Change Policy (2019), which promotes a low-carbon economy and sustainable resource use. The country has become a leader in electronic waste management, establishing Africa’s first e-waste recycling plant in 2017. This research highlights Rwanda’s success in integrating civic involvement and policy innovation to foster environmental stewardship, improve sustainability, and address the challenges posed by economic growth.
A simulation platform for connected autonomous vehicles incorporating physical and communication simulators
(2024) Chen, Yuhao; Cai, Lin
This project report provides a holistic record of the development of a connected autonomous vehicle simulation framework incorporating a physics simulator and a communication simulator. The development of this tool aims to help researchers in vehicle communication protocols to evaluate the simulated performance of their solutions in the physical world. By using this tool, communication researchers can observe the impact of their communication protocols on the actual connected autonomous vehicle operation process without the need to delve into the underlying logic of vehicle kinematic simulation. They only need to configure simple parameters and deploy their own protocols on the communication simulator and see the effect. This project report will start by introducing the components and operating principles of the entire system, and then demonstrate its usage through a simple simulation example.
World model based multi-agent proximal policy optimization framework for multi-agent pathfinding
(2024) Chung, Jaehoon; Najjaran, Homayoun
Multi-agent pathfinding plays a crucial role in various robot applications. Recently, deep reinforcement learning methods have been adopted to solve large-scale planning problems in a decentralized manner. Nonetheless, such approaches pose challenges such as non-stationarity and partial observability. This thesis addresses these challenges by introducing a centralized communication block into a multi-agent proximal policy optimization framework. The evaluation is conducted in a simulation based environment, featuring continuous state and action spaces. The simulator consists of a vectorized 2D physics engine where agents are bound by the laws of physics.
Within the framework, a World model is utilized to extract and abstract representation features from the global map, leveraging the global context to enhance the training process. This approach involves decoupling the feature extractor from the agent training process, enabling a more accurate representation of the global state that remains unbiased by the actions of the agents. Furthermore, the modularized approach offers the flexibility to replace the representation model with another model or modify tasks within the global map without the retraining of the agents.
The empirical study demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach by comparing three proximal policy optimization-based multi-agent pathfinding frameworks. The results indicate that utilizing an autoencoder-based state representation model as the centralized communication model sufficiently provides the global context. Additionally, introducing centralized communication block improves performance and the generalization capability of agent policies.
Innovation, communication, and collaboration: Understanding family group decision making models in Canada and beyond
(University of Victoria, 2024) Ramsay, Jasmine
Beyond the office: The role of clinical outreach services in counselling with Indigenous children, youth, and families
(University of Victoria, 2024) Elgharbawy, Heba