Hierarchical cellular automata methods

Abstract

Many real-world spatial systems involve interacting processes that operate over more than scale. Whilst there has been a strong growth in knowledge about multiscale systems in many disciplines, the advent of coupled, multiresolution, multiscale and hierarchical cellular automata has been recent in comparison. Here, the structural definition of a cellular automaton is augmented with an abstraction operator, which transforms the cellular automaton into a hierarchy of cellular spaces. Simple propagation is used as a familiar and common behavioural phenomenon in several examples of behavioural specification. The purpose of this chapter is to provide the basics of a general framework, from which may be constructed for specific applications. Simple examples from landscape ecology are used to elucidate the methods. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.