Modelling Surface Flows for Macroscopic Phenomena by Cellular Automata: An Application to Debris Flows

Cellular automata are good candidates for modelling and simulating complex dynamical systems, whose evolution depends on the local interactions of their constituent parts. Many macroscopic phenomena have such features, but their complexity involves sometime the interaction of heterogeneous processes, whose composition is not immediate in a cellular automaton frame. Furthermore the managing of flows could be not trivial, because cellular automata and derived models as lattice-gas methods cannot always be applied successfully to macroscopic cases. We propose some empirical and practical rules for modelling some macroscopic phenomena with surface flows. An application to complex debris flows is exhibited together with the results of simulations of a real case.