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Several studies have shown that the performance of a supply chain is heavily influenced by the pattern of relationships among firms. This paper analyzes the structure of relationships (network topology) that leads to the highest agility of a food supply chain when sudden demand changes occur. To do this, a simulation model that represents a supply chain and specific rules to allocate orders is built. The supply chain in the model follows the specific characteristics of trade in the primary sector. The model is fitted to the conditions of a real seafood supply chain in Mexico. Agility is measured through the effect on the order fulfillment of a sudden demand shock and the recovery time of this rate to previous values. The simulation results show that the most suitable structure depends on how product is distributed among suppliers. If product is evenly shared, supply chains with homogeneous topologies are more agile than supply chains with heterogeneous topologies, but the result is the opposite if product is unevenly shared among suppliers. Other previous recommendations, such as having multiple suppliers and horizontal links, are confirmed by the simulations. These findings contribute to the general debate on which is the optimal topology for an agile supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review recent developments in cartographic research in North America, in the context of informing the 29th International Cartographic Conference, and 18th General Assembly in 2019. The titles of papers published since 2015 in four leading cartographic journals yielded a corpus of 245 documents containing 1109 unique terms. These terms were analyzed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation and by visual analytics to produce 14 topic groups that mapped onto five classes. These classes were named as information visualization, cartographic data, spatial analysis and applications, methods and models, and GIScience. The classes were then used as themes to discuss the recent cartographic literature more broadly, first, to review recent trends in the research and to identify research gaps, and second, to examine prospects for new research over the next 20 years. A conclusion draws some broad findings from the review, suggesting that cartographic research in the future will be aimed less at dealing with data, and more at generating insight and knowledge to better inform society about global challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]