A flooding algorithm is an

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

for distributing material to every part of a graph. The name derives from the concept of inundation by a

flood A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant con ...

. Flooding algorithms are used in computer networking and

graphics Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of the data, as in design and manufa ...

. Flooding algorithms are also useful for solving many mathematical problems, including maze problems and many problems in

graph theory In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of ''graph (discrete mathematics), graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of ''Vertex (graph ...

. Different flooding algorithms can be applied for different problems, and run with different time complexities. For example, the flood fill algorithm is a simple but relatively robust algorithm that works for intricate geometries and can determine which part of the (target) area that is connected to a given (source) node in a multi-dimensional array, and is trivially generalized to arbitrary graph structures. If there instead are several source nodes, there are no obstructions in the geometry represented in the multi-dimensional array, and one wishes to segment the area based on which of the source nodes the target nodes are closest to, while the flood fill algorithm can still be used, the jump flooding algorithm is potentially much faster as it has a lower time complexity. Unlike the flood fill algorithm, however, the jump flooding algorithm cannot trivially be generalized to unstructured graphs.

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Flooding edge or node weighted graphs, Fernand Meyer

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