Cellular Automata Simulation of Lava Flows - Applications to Civil Defense and Land Use Planning with a Cellular Automata based Methodology

A large number of people live either on or in the surrounding areas of hundreds of worldwide active volcanoes. For this reason, the individuation of those areas that are more likely to be affected by new eruptive events is of fundamental importance for diminishing possible consequences in terms of loss of human lives and/or material properties. We here illustrate a methodology for defining flexible high-detailed lava invasion hazard maps which is based on a efficient Cellular Automata computational model for simulating lava flows on present topographic data and on High Performance Parallel Computing for increasing computational efficiency. We also show the application of the methodology to the entire area surrounding Mt Etna (Italy), Europe’s most active volcano, showing its suitability for land use planning and civil defence applications. Furthermore, specific applications to inhabited areas of the volcano are also shown, which demonstrate the methodology’s applicability in this field.