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. Besides, 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 Models (DEM), or three-dimensional (3D) satellite images, are scarce. 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, developed by the authors, named RACA (RAinfall with Cellular Automata). The purpose of RACA is to obtain, from the simulation, numerical and 3D results related to the total cumulative flow and maximum level of water that allow us to make decisions on important issues such as analyzing how climate change will affect the water level in a particular area, estimating the future water supply of a population, establishing future construction projects and urban planning away from locations with high probability of flooding, or preventing the destruction of property and human life from future natural disasters in urban areas with probability of flooding.