Cellular automata modelling and spreadability

The purpose of this paper is to give an alternative modelling approach to spatio-temporal systems which is more satisfactory from an implementation point of view: a discrete approach based on cellular automata. Moreover, we concentrate on geographic spread phenomenon which occurs in various fields ranging from ecology and biology to medical science and species abundance. Spreadability concept and spray control [1,2] has been much less studied in continuous systems because of the difficulties in partial differential equations modelling approach. We recall the main features of spreadability as developed in [1] and show that they may be described and implemented very simply by cellular automata approach. Various examples illustrate the developed results. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.