Exploring Simple Spatial Models of River Floods

Team: 34

School: La Cueva High

Area of Science: Earth and Space Sciences


Interim:

Abstract

River flooding may destroy neighboring farm fields and prevent crops from growing. It would be useful to have a model to predict in what places the Rio Grande and connecting irrigation channels will flood in the case of heavy rains, and provide locations of "barriers" that will decrease the amount of flooding in the area. Currently, the model displays flooded areas given a region and without the impact of soil absorption. It is interesting and exciting to use chemical reactions to represent water flow. The starting model is similar to a cellular automata approach and is implemented using a surface chemical reaction network (CRN) simulator. Symbols are used to represent the state of each cell. The chemical reactions reflect changes in the cell's state. Each cell is compared with its 6 neighboring cells to determine the direction of water flow. A hexagonal grid is used so that the center of each cell is equally distant to each of its neighbors.

Here is the link to the full interim report with images of the results of the simulation:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BDHIFsu6KSBVuU8n6mc8hPIiEwbBgyUr/view?usp=sharing

Mentor: Darko Stefanovic


Team Members:

  Yana Outkin

Sponsoring Teacher: Yolanda Lozano

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