Setting Up Your rfaR Project

We recommend organizing your analysis as an RStudio project. This keeps file paths relative and reproducible across machines.

Step 1 — Create a new RStudio Project

In RStudio: File → New Project → New Directory → New Project

Name it something like my_dam_rfa/. This creates a .Rproj file and sets the working directory automatically on open.

Step 2 — Recommended directory structure

my_dam_rfa/
├── my_dam_rfa.Rproj
├── data/
│   ├── resmodel.csv
│   ├── hydrographs/
│   │   ├── event_1.csv
│   │   └── event_2.csv
│   └── stage_record.csv
├── R/
│   └── my_dam_simulate.R
└── output/

Step 3 — Import your data

rfaR expects data in specific formats. The built-in datasets show the required structure:

# Reservoir model: elevation, storage, outflow
head(jmd_resmodel)

# Hydrograph: time and flow columns
head(jmd_hydro_apr1999)

# Stage record: date and stage columns  
head(jmd_wy1980_stage)

Read your own data using read.csv() with relative paths:

resmodel  <- read.csv("data/resmodel.csv")
stage_rec <- read.csv("data/stage_record.csv")

Step 4 — Verify column structure

Before running rfa_simulate(), verify your imported data matches the expected format:

# Check against built-in example
str(jmd_resmodel)
str(resmodel)  # should match