A Preliminary Cellular Model for Sand Coastal Erosion and Experimental Contrast with Porto Cesareo Case

The phenomenon of sand erosion is recently spreading in Mediterranean beaches in a worrisome way. Cellular Automata modelling such a phenomenon involves many difficulties for adopting a convenient time and space scale (minute and decimeter), that can permit temporally reasonable simulations. A very preliminary model RUSICA was developed in association with an experimental work in order to test hypotheses, to receive suggestion separately for some basic processes and to learn from past occurred cases. During this contamination phase, some experimental applications were succesfully projected in order to contrast sand erosion on the coast. This paper presents the current initial version of RUSICA for sand erosion/transport/deposition and describes the results obtained at Porto Cesareo coast in the Italian Apulia Region. Complete simulations by RUSICA will soon follow this preparatory work.