HydroPortailStats
France's national flood statistics, ported out of Fortran and into R.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
daedalus vs sps
A side-by-side editorial comparison of daedalus and sps — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
daedalus vs sps: at a glance
What is daedalus?
An epidemic-economic model teaching its interventions to react to the outbreak itself.
daedalus couples an infectious-disease model to sector-level economic costs, letting users test non-pharmaceutical interventions against both epidemic and fiscal outcomes. Over autumn 2025 the intervention layer went from a single fixed closure to sequential timed NPIs and then to closures that lift in response to the model's own instantaneous reproduction number. Alongside that, the cost functions were reworked so illness states map more carefully onto lost productivity.
What is sps?
sps keeps sanding down sequential Poisson sampling rather than adding to it.
The package implements sequential Poisson sampling for survey design, covering inclusion probabilities, proportional allocation, replicate weights, and take-all strata. Recent releases are small and tightly scoped: a divisor method helper, an iterator that draws a sample one unit at a time, automatic selection of the replicate-weight parameter, and repeated performance work on inclusion probability calculation.
daedalus vs sps: editorial side-by-side
daedalus
0.0INFRA · APIS
An epidemic-economic model teaching its interventions to react to the outbreak itself.
◆ Current state
daedalus couples an infectious-disease model to sector-level economic costs, letting users test non-pharmaceutical interventions against both epidemic and fiscal outcomes. Over autumn 2025 the intervention layer went from a single fixed closure to sequential timed NPIs and then to closures that lift in response to the model's own instantaneous reproduction number. Alongside that, the cost functions were reworked so illness states map more carefully onto lost productivity.
◆ Where it's heading
The arc is toward a model that behaves like a policy simulator rather than a scenario calculator: interventions now have their own state machine, R_t is computed inside the ODE system, and event handling has been pulled out of the output object. Correction releases sit between the feature ones, including an indexing fix the maintainers flag as required for accurate projections. The versioning is patch-level but the changes are structural.
◆ Prediction
With R_t and the next-generation matrix now available in-model, the likely next step is richer response rules keyed to those quantities; the entries give no signal on when a stable 1.0 arrives.
sps
2.5INFRA · APIS
sps keeps sanding down sequential Poisson sampling rather than adding to it.
◆ Current state
The package implements sequential Poisson sampling for survey design, covering inclusion probabilities, proportional allocation, replicate weights, and take-all strata. Recent releases are small and tightly scoped: a divisor method helper, an iterator that draws a sample one unit at a time, automatic selection of the replicate-weight parameter, and repeated performance work on inclusion probability calculation.
◆ Where it's heading
Development is consolidation rather than expansion. Most releases either speed up an existing routine or remove a decision the user previously had to make by hand, such as picking the smallest parameter that keeps replicate weights non-negative. Documentation and tooling get comparable attention to the algorithms, with a dedicated vignette on inclusion probabilities and a recent switch of test and documentation infrastructure. The API surface has been essentially stable across the window.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued small ergonomic and performance releases against the existing function set rather than new sampling designs, which is the pattern every release in this window follows.
Alternatives to daedalus and sps
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either daedalus or sps.
bsvarSIGNs
Sign, zero and narrative restrictions brought into the bsvars ecosystem.
estimatr
Fast design-based estimators for experiments, coasting on CRAN patches.
ggdist
The grammar of uncertainty visualization, now drawing the uncertainty in its own estimates.
ipaddress
IP address vectors for R that hit 1.0 and then went quiet.
ltertools
A column-key toolkit for stitching decades of ecological field data into one table.
See all daedalus alternatives → · See all sps alternatives →
Recent activity from daedalus and sps
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agospsDocumentation polish; switches to tinytest and litedown
- 9mo agospsFixes extra argument handling in sps_iterator()
- 9mo agodaedalusVersion bump for a symposium preview build
- 9mo agodaedalusInterventions now lift in response to live R_t ⚡
- 10mo agodaedalusWithin-sector contact scaling corrected to quadratic
- 10mo agodaedalusIllness-driven absence reworked in the cost model
- 10mo agodaedalusMultiple sequential time-limited closures
- 11mo agodaedalusState array indexing corrections; earlier projections unreliable
- 11mo agospsAdds divisor_method() and a one-unit-at-a-time sampling iterator
- 1y agospsAdds an inclusion-probability vignette and faster partial sorting
- 1y agospsAutomatic tau selection for replicate weights
- 2y agospsAdds becomes_ta() for take-all stratum sample sizes
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between daedalus and sps?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. sps is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is daedalus better than sps?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. sps is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to daedalus?
Top daedalus alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "daedalus alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/daedalus for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to sps?
Top sps alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "sps alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/sps for the full list with editorial commentary on each.