Simulations of Debris/Mud Flows Invading Urban Areas: A Cellular Automata Approach with SCIDDICA

Different methodologies are used for modelling flow-like landslides. A critical point concerns the flooding of town areas, which cannot be assimilated straight to a morphology, especially, when the urban tissue is very irregular with narrow streets and setting of buildings, which reflect historical contingencies. SCIDDICA is a competitive (related to PDE approach) Cellular Automata model for 3-dimensions simulation of flow-like landslides. This paper presents innovations to the transition function of SCIDDICA-SS2, which manage opportunely building data in the cells corresponding to the urban tissue. That permits to simulate the complete evolution of landslides, from the detachment area to its exhaustion almost on the same precision level. This is an advantage for hazard and risk analyses in threatened zones. Improved SCIDDICA-SS2 was applied successfully to the well-known 2009 debris flows of Giampilieri Superiore also in comparison with simulation results of the previous versions.