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

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.