The latest release of the lava flows simulation model SCIARA: First application to Mt Etna (Italy) and solution of the anisotropic flow direction problem on an ideal surface

This paper presents the latest developments of the deterministic Macroscopic Cellular Automata model SCIARA for simulating lava flows. A Bingham-like rheology has been introduced for the first time as part of the Minimization Algorithm of the Differences, which is applied for computing lava outflows from the generic cell towards its neighbours. The hexagonal cellular space adopted in the previous releases of the model for mitigating the anisotropic flow direction problem has been replaced by a–Moore neighbourhood–square one, nevertheless by producing an even better solution for the anisotropic effect. Furthermore, many improvements have been introduced concerning the important modelling aspect of lava cooling. The model has been tested with encouraging results by considering both a real case of study, the 2006 lava flows at Mt Etna (Italy), and an ideal surface, namely a 5°inclined plane, in order to evaluate the magnitude of the anisotropic effect. As a matter of fact, notwithstanding a preliminary calibration, the model demonstrated to be more accurate than its predecessors, providing the best results ever obtained on the simulation of the considered real case of study. Eventually, experiments performed on the inclined plane have pointed out how this release of SCIARA does not present the typical anisotropic problem of deterministic Cellular Automata models for fluids on ideal surfaces.