The VIC Model
VIC is a macroscale hydrologic model that solves full water and energy balances, originally developed by Xu Liang at the University of Washington. VIC is a research model and in its various forms it has been applied to many watersheds including the Columbia River, the Ohio River, the Arkansas-Red Rivers, and the Upper Mississippi Rivers, as well as being applied globally. If you make use of this model, please acknowledge the appropriate references listed on the references page.
Development and maintenance of the current official version of the VIC model is conducted at the University of Washington, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, under the direction of Dennis P. Lettenmaier. Every new application apresses new problems and conditions which the model may not currently be able to handle, and as such the model is always under development. For information about the current release of the VIC model or to get the source code for beta versions of releases under development, send e-mail to vicadmin@hydro.washington.edu. Please include "VIC Model" in the subject line.
How to Use This Web Site
This web site has been divided into the following sections:
- What Is VIC?
Here we describe the basic purpose and functions of the model and its major components.
- How to Run VIC
Here we provide a step-by-step guide to running VIC and the routing model, including instructions on preparing input files, running the models, post-processing and plotting the outputs, and calibrating the models. A list of selected VIC and routing model references is included.
- Model Development
Here we describe the features and bug fixes in the current versions of the VIC and routing models, differences with previous models, and features and bug fixes under development for future releases.
- Downloads
Here we provide source code for VIC and the routing model, sample datasets, and programs for preparing model inputs or processing/plotting model outputs.
- Frequently Asked Questions
Here we list frequently-asked VIC-related questions and their answers.
- VIC Users Listserve
Link to the VIC Users list, where many of your questions can be answered by other VIC users.
- Links
Links to related web sites, including institutions applying and/or developing VIC.
- Contact
List of people who are currently or have been recently involved in maintaining the VIC model and web site.