Simulating rainfall, water evaporation and groundwater flow in three-dimensional satellite images with cellular automata

Remote sensing has been used in numerous environmental simulations with the aim of solving and improving many different kinds of problems, e.g., meteorology applications, soil quality studies, water resource exploration, and environmental protection. Cellular automata have been widely used in the field of remote sensing for simulating natural phenomena over two-dimensional satellite images. However, simulations on Digital Elevation Model (DEM), or three-dimensional (3D) satellite images, are rare. This paper presents a study of modeling and simulation of the weather phenomena of rainfall, water evaporation and groundwater flow in 3D satellite images through a new algorithm named RACA (RAinfall with Cellular Automata). The aim of RACA is to obtain, from the simulation, numerical and 3D results related to the water level that allow us to make decisions on important issues such as preventing the destruction of human life and property from future natural disasters in urban areas with probability of flooding, establishing future construction projects and urban planning away from locations with high probability of flooding, or estimating the future water supply of a population.