5.8 - Beta Release (April 2021)

The changes in this beta will be available in the next Source production release, due out at the end of June 2021.

This release includes a number of small improvements in usability and validation. There have been improvements to:

• Environmental Flows,
• Calibration Improvements,
• Date Time format changes, 
• Hot Start Rainfall runoff models,
• Ownership proportions at Splitters.

Environmental Flows

There has been a number of improvements in Environmental Flows. We have extended the Environmental Flows node's Spell action. Functions are now available for:

• Number of spells in a season
• Number of spells for success in a season, and
• Spell duration.

The values of these functions can't change every day during a simulation. The values of the functions are taken from before the start of the season. To allow for the forcing of spells during a season, the values need to be taken allowing for travel time before the start of the season.

There is also a new option to allow the fall phase of spells to occur after the end of the season.

Scenario Input Sets and the Export summary will now include more information about Environmental Flow Actions. The path for the existing Scenario Inputs Sets will need to change from Rules → Actions.  API details are in RM-16591. Terminology in the User Interface for one of the Initial Values at the start of run has been corrected during the process of developing the full API. Time since last successful season has been changed to Time since last successful spell in a successful season. For spell-based actions, we have removed the use of the term planned and now only use forcing.

Calibration Improvements

You can now calibrate parameters using Scenario Input Sets.  We are continuing to develop this and there will be more details and changes in 5.9beta.

Date Time format changes

We have had a couple of issues with date formats changing on different computers. We are resolving this by moving to export based on yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss. We will continue to import data from a variety of formats, however, tools such as Scenario Input Sets, and the Export Summary will now be using this format regardless of the user's computer settings.

Hot Start Rainfall Runoff Models

The user interface has been consolidated to a single tab, and it's been made clear that it has currently only been implemented for GR4J and Sacramento.

Ownership proportions at Splitters

There was an oversight in the algorithm to determine ownership at the splitter node. Ownership at splitters could become negative in rare cases when sharing unallocated flows. 

It previously assumed the allocated flow was always less than the actual flow. This has now been resolved. 

Plugin Developers

We are now upgrading to Visual Studio 2019. Plugin developers will need to use Visual Studio 2019 for 5.8beta onwards.

Regression Testing

We have removed the tolerance in our regression tests to allow for earlier identification of different machines or versions of operating systems giving different results. 

Regression test repository changes since the first Source 5.7beta:

 02 projects added
 04 projects removed
 09 Project updated results
 02 projects input sets updated 

Details here: 5.8 Regression Test Changes

Insight

To run Insight, you also need to install the 32bit version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package.
This installer is for 32bit machines and 64bit machines since the library we use is 32bit: Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86).

Full Release Documentation