Unstructured Cellular Automata in Ecohydraulics Modelling

Classical Cellular Automata (CA) have proven to be a viable approach in ecohydraulics modelling but are based on structured grids that have limited geometrical modelling flexibility. This research is to identify whether the CA paradigm can be extended to unstructured grids. The concept of Unstructured Cellular Automata (UCA) is developed and UCA configurations are explored. A characteristic parameter —min distance of UCA– was put forward and tested by numerical experiments. Special attention was paid to exploring the analogies between the discrete CA paradigm and discrete numerical approximations for solving PDE’s. The practical applicability of UCA in ecohydraulics modelling is explored through a number of case studies and compared with field measurements.