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momentuHMM

ANALYTICS
Velocity0.0

Maximum Likelihood Analysis of Animal Movement Behavior Using Multivariate Hidden Markov Models

github.com/bmcclintock/momentuHMM ↗

The animal-movement HMM workhorse, feature-frozen since 2021 and coasting on compiler patches

movement-ecologyhidden-markov-modelstelemetrymaintenance-modercpparmadillor-package
◆Current state
momentuHMM fits hidden Markov models to animal telemetry — multiple data streams, measurement error, temporally irregular tracks, hierarchical and mixture structures. It is one of the reference implementations in movement ecology and is cited as such. Its capability set has been essentially fixed since 2021; the last four years of releases are compiler, dependency and CRAN metadata work.
◆Where it's heading
The development arc peaked with 1.5.0 in 2019, which brought hierarchical HMMs, discrete individual random effects and multivariate normal data streams, and effectively closed with 1.5.4 in 2021. What follows is a maintenance tail driven entirely by other people's changes: RcppArmadillo deprecating a function, Brobdingnag unexporting one, crawl dropping an import, CRAN asking for metadata edits. The package is stable in the sense that matters to its users and dormant in the sense that matters to its roadmap.
◆Prediction
On this pattern the next release will be another upstream-forced patch rather than new modelling capability, unless a maintainer change or a new methods paper reopens development.

◆Recent moves

  1. 8mo ago

    Drops an unexported Brobdingnag import

    Stops importing sum from Brobdingnag after upstream stopped exporting it. A one-line reaction to a dependency change, characteristic of every release for the past four years.

    View source ↗
  2. 9mo ago

    Switches to std::isfinite after RcppArmadillo deprecation

    Replaces arma::is_finite with std::isfinite in two headers to clear deprecation warnings from a newer RcppArmadillo. Compiler hygiene with no effect on model fitting.

    View source ↗
  3. 1y ago

    CRAN-requested metadata and documentation edits

    Updates DESCRIPTION, CITATION and help files at CRAN's request. Archive-avoidance housekeeping, three years after the previous release.

    View source ↗
  4. 3y ago

    raster moved to Imports after crawl dropped it

    Moves raster into Imports because crawl no longer brings it along from version 2.3.0. A dependency-graph adjustment users would not observe.

    View source ↗
  5. 4y ago

    Random-walk stream offset bug invalidates prior fits

    Fixes a time-step offset that corrupted any model combining a normal random walk data stream with another stream, with the notes explicitly telling affected users to re-run past analyses. That advisory makes this the most consequential release in the recent history, and it is also the last one to add a feature.

    View source ↗
  6. 5y ago

    doFuture becomes the default parallel backend

    Switches the default parallel backend to doFuture, which means multicore runs now require doFuture and future to be installed, and adds a progress bar plus reserved-name restrictions on data streams. A deliberate infrastructure change rather than the upstream-driven patches that followed it.

    View source ↗