Making it easier to run APSIM crop simulation modelling with R-Instat

[dannyparsons]

There's a new version of APSIM, APSIM-Next Generation, and this has come with a new R package https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/apsimx/ The functions in this package inspect, read, edit and run files for 'APSIM' "Next Generation" ('JSON') and 'APSIM' "Classic" ('XML').

It also has functions to create and edit the .met weather files, impute missing values and QC weather data. I was previously using the APSIM R package to create .met files but this is no longer on CRAN.

I think it could be useful for R-Instat to be able to create the .met files to help users get their climatic data ready for APSIM. If we combine this with our own, and maybe some of their infilling of missing values methods, including infilling from gridded data sources that could be a great system.

It also seems easy to create, edit and run APSIM files with the apsimx R package. Although to implement this we start getting towards re-implementing the APSIM interface. It might be interesting to understand if there are any simple functionalities that we could implement that would be useful for some of our users.