arulesViz
arulesViz finished its move to ggplot2 and has been coasting on maintenance since.
Comparison · Analytics
epiflows vs NWCTrends
A side-by-side editorial comparison of epiflows and NWCTrends — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
epiflows vs NWCTrends: at a glance
What is epiflows?
epiflows has shipped four releases in eight years, none of which changed the code.
epiflows predicts the spread of infectious disease along population flows between locations, and it is effectively dormant. The whole visible history spans 2018 to 2026 in four entries: the first CRAN release, a Zenodo archival tag, a Roxygen patch whose notes state the functionality is unchanged, and a 2026 release replacing deprecated ggplot2 and tibble calls. No entry describes new epidemiological capability.
What is NWCTrends?
The salmon status-review trend package, maintained one federal review cycle at a time
NWCTrends fits multivariate state-space trend models to Pacific salmon population data and generates the tables and figures used in NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center viability and status reviews. Its release history maps onto those review cycles rather than a development calendar: v1.0 carries the 2015 review code, v1.25 the 2020 review, v1.30 the changes since. The 2026 v1.31 is internal restructuring and a dependency swap.
epiflows vs NWCTrends: editorial side-by-side
epiflows
0.0ANALYTICS
epiflows has shipped four releases in eight years, none of which changed the code.
◆ Current state
epiflows predicts the spread of infectious disease along population flows between locations, and it is effectively dormant. The whole visible history spans 2018 to 2026 in four entries: the first CRAN release, a Zenodo archival tag, a Roxygen patch whose notes state the functionality is unchanged, and a 2026 release replacing deprecated ggplot2 and tibble calls. No entry describes new epidemiological capability.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is being kept installable rather than developed. The one recent release is dependency maintenance contributed from outside, which is the pattern for RECON-era epidemiology packages that have outlived their original project funding. Two separate entries are both labelled version 0.2.1, so even the version history is not a reliable guide to what changed.
◆ Prediction
Any further releases will most likely be more deprecation cleanup to keep the package on CRAN; there is nothing in the record suggesting active development has resumed.
NWCTrends
0.0ANALYTICS
The salmon status-review trend package, maintained one federal review cycle at a time
◆ Current state
NWCTrends fits multivariate state-space trend models to Pacific salmon population data and generates the tables and figures used in NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center viability and status reviews. Its release history maps onto those review cycles rather than a development calendar: v1.0 carries the 2015 review code, v1.25 the 2020 review, v1.30 the changes since. The 2026 v1.31 is internal restructuring and a dependency swap.
◆ Where it's heading
Development is driven by reproducibility of a specific government reporting product, so most work goes into making the report generation configurable and the fitting assumptions explicit rather than into new modelling. The 2020 cycle removed hard-coded per-population hacks and made the fitting window an explicit argument; the 2023 cycle moved plot styling into package options and clarified how missing data and zeros are handled in the published tables.
◆ Prediction
The cadence suggests the next substantive release arrives with the next status review rather than before it, most likely continuing the move of report parameters out of function signatures and into structured configuration.
Alternatives to epiflows and NWCTrends
Other Analytics 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 epiflows or NWCTrends.
EvoPhylo
EvoPhylo added BEAST2 alongside MrBayes, then went quiet for two years.
treespace
treespace ships once every year or two, and only when CRAN or a user forces it.
Rpath
Rpath 1.1.0 learns to read Ecopath's own files, easing migration off the desktop tool.
TAF
TAF keeps turning ICES stock assessments into reproducible, dependency-pinned projects.
parallelDist
parallelDist is in pure preservation mode — one build fix every few years.
See all epiflows alternatives → · See all NWCTrends alternatives →
Recent activity from epiflows and NWCTrends
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 5mo agoepiflowsDeprecated ggplot2 and tibble calls replaced
- 7mo agoNWCTrendsReport params extracted to a list; gdata replaced with readxl
- 3y agoNWCTrendsPlot options move into package globals; figure data exported to CSV
- 3y agoepiflowsRoxygen patch for CRAN checks
- 5y agoNWCTrendsExplicit fitting window replaces implicit full-data fits
- 5y agoNWCTrendsInitial release packaging the 2015 status review code
- 7y agoepiflowsFirst Zenodo archival tag
- 8y agoepiflowsFirst CRAN release
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between epiflows and NWCTrends?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. epiflows and NWCTrends are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is epiflows better than NWCTrends?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. epiflows and NWCTrends are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to epiflows?
Top epiflows alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "epiflows alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/epiflows-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to NWCTrends?
Top NWCTrends alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "NWCTrends alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/nwctrends-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.