Reply to comment by Añel on “Most computational hydrology is not reproducible, so is it really science?”

Hutton, Christopher; Wagener, Thorsten; Freer, J. E.; Han, Dawei; Duffy, Chris; Arheimer, Berit

doi:10.1002/2017wr020480

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Beginning in 2014, the VIC model has been licensed with the open-source GNU General Public License version 2. The motivation behind making the model source code completely open source was to encourage participation by the model user and development community at large and to increase scientific transparency in the model development and application process (Ince et al, 2012). The VIC source code now uses the Git version control system (Torvalds and Hamano, 2010) and is publicly available on GitHub (https: //github.com/UW-Hydro/VIC, last access: 20 August 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, an active discussion ensued in response to the paper by Hutton et al (2016), not so much about the need for improved workflows, but about implementation details and the required level of rigor (Anel, 2017;Melsen et al, 2017;Hut et al, 2017;Hutton et al, 2017a, b). This debate takes place within a broader academic discussion of the need for open-source computer programs to increase scientific transparency in the model development and application process (Ince et al, 2012). Improved model source code maintenance, standardized test setups, and transparency comprise only part of this drive towards greater reproducibility.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Variable Infiltration Capacity model version 5 (VIC-5): infrastructure improvements for new applications and reproducibility

Hamman¹,

Nijssen²,

Bohn³

et al. 2018

Geosci. Model Dev.

181

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Abstract. The Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model is a macroscale semi-distributed hydrologic model. VIC development began in the early 1990s and the model has since been used extensively for basin- to global-scale applications that include hydrologic dataset construction, trend analysis of hydrologic fluxes and states, data evaluation and assimilation, forecasting, coupled climate modeling, and climate change impact assessment. Ongoing operational applications of the VIC model include the University of Washington's drought monitoring and forecasting systems and NASA's Land Data Assimilation System. This paper documents the development of VIC version 5 (VIC-5), which includes a major reconfiguration of the legacy VIC source code to support a wider range of modern hydrologic modeling applications. The VIC source code has been moved to a public GitHub repository to encourage participation by the broader user and developer communities. The reconfiguration has separated the core physics of the model from the driver source code, whereby the latter is responsible for memory allocation, preprocessing and post-processing, and input–output (I–O). VIC-5 includes four drivers that use the same core physics modules, but which allow for different methods for accessing this core to enable different model applications. Finally, VIC-5 is distributed with robust test infrastructure, components of which routinely run during development using cloud-hosted continuous integration. The work described here provides an example to the model development community for extending the life of a legacy model that is being used extensively. The development and release of VIC-5 represents a significant step forward for the VIC user community in terms of support for existing and new model applications, reproducibility, and scientific robustness.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%