What are the disadvantages of CatchmentSIMs flow routing algorithm?
The main disadvantage of CatchmentSIM’s flow routing algorithm is an increased run-time requirement for the algorithm. Furthermore, since flow is traced as a vector quantity it may only access one of its four immediate neighbours. This can cause a stepped nature of flow paths when they are in defined channels which can slightly exaggerate flow distances in channels. When using this algorithm, hydrologic pre-processing can be a touch more difficult since as flow can only access four pixels instead of eight in the D8 method. This can result in the same DEM effectively having more flat and pit pixels when being used with the CatchmentSIM flow routing algorithm than when being used with D8 method. On the whole, these disadvantages are minor and are dwarfed by the algorithms advantages over the D8 method.
