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https://github.com/dvalters/hail-caesar

The High-Performance Architecture-Independent LISFLOOD-CAESAR model of floodplain, river, and sediment dynamics
https://github.com/dvalters/hail-caesar

caesar-lisflood cellular-automaton flood-inundation hail-caesar hydrological-model landscape-evolution lisflood numerical-modelling sediment-transport

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The High-Performance Architecture-Independent LISFLOOD-CAESAR model of floodplain, river, and sediment dynamics

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# HAIL-CAESAR



This is the development version of the HAIL-CAESAR surface flooding model. (now including a basic Groundwater component)



_The **H**igh-performance **A**rchitecture **I**ndependent **L**ISFLOOD-**C**AESAR model_



HAIL-CAESAR is a hydrodynamic, landscape evolution, cellular automaton model. In other words, it simulates the movement of water and erosion of sediment in a river catchment, for the purposes of investigating flood-inundation, sediment transport and catchment evolution over a range of timescales from hours to thousands of years. (And potentially longer if you are really patient enough...)



The development of HAIL-CAESAR is led by Declan Valters (@dvalters), at the British Geological Survey (@BritGeoSurvey). Over the years model development has been supported by funding from a NERC PhD Studentship, ARCHER eCSE funding awards, other NERC grants, in particular via the Edinburgh Land Surface Dynamics Group (@LSDTopoTools) at Edinburgh University, and the University of Manchester.



The model is derived from the [CAESAR-Lisflood model](https://sourceforge.net/projects/caesar-lisflood/), which is a C#/.NET Windows-based implementation of the model, with a very useful GUI. You may find much of the documentation and discussion for CAESAR-Lisflood relevant for using HAIL-CAESAR, but remember there are small differences at present, so treat the documentation [here](http://hail-caesar.readthedocs.io/en/latest) as the canonical source.



HAIL-CAESAR doesn't have a GUI - the model is run from scripts or from typing commands at the command line/terminal. The model runs and writes output directly to files on disk. You then have to process these output files yourself to view the model output subsequently. 



[LSDMappingTools](https://github.com/LSDtopotools/LSDMappingTools) is a good package for visualising the output and producing research-quality figures from HAIL-CAESAR. GIS programs, such as the excellent [QGIS](www.qgis.org) are also useful.



[Documentation can be found here](http://hail-caesar.readthedocs.io/en/latest).



### Why is it called HAIL-CAESAR?



*Historical interlude...*



The original CAESAR Model stood for **C**ellular **A**utomaton **E**volutionary **S**lope **a**nd **R**iver model. It was developed by [Tom Coulthard](http://www.coulthard.org.uk/) and was originally written in the C programming language. Later it was ported to the C# programming language and developed a GUI and you can watch the flood simulation update in real time on screen. Later still (2013), it was coupled with a flood inundation model, LISFLOOD-FP, which replaced the existing non-hydrodynamic flow routing model in CAESAR. In 2014-2016, it was translated into C++ to facilitate an OpenMP parallelisation of the model, so that it could be compiled and run on different computing services such as clusters and HPC, which are usually linux-based. I called it the **H**igh **P**erformance **A**rchitecture **I**ndependent **L**isflood **CAESAR** model, because everybody loves a good project acronym...