SIMULATION OF DYNAMIC PHENOMENA BY CELLULAR-AUTOMATA

This paper is aimed at showing how cellular automata can be convenient ly employed to simulate dynamic phenomena, typically involving transpo rtation, diffusion, or propagation problems. A cellular automaton can be viewed as made of two parts: a computational engine based on a prop er discretization of the domain and charged with correctness and consi stency controls, and a dynamic model constituted by transition functio ns that express cell behaviour. The adoption of cellular automata intr oduces a new means of spatial data modelling, in addition to those tra ditionally provided by GIS packages, resulting in the possibility of s toring elements of dynamic knowledge in cellular maps: each cell is pr ovided with the attributes that constitute its state, and groups of ce lls with the functions that describe their mutual interaction. The bas ic characteristics of cellular automata are discussed with reference t o a significant application case, the study of tide propagation over a lagoon.