This repo contains a workbook to work through the Geocomputation with R pre-conference workshop, an event sponsored by the QMRG.
It is based on Geocomputation with R, a book by Robin Lovelace, Jakub Nowosad, and Jannes Muenchow:
Lovelace, Robin, Jakub Nowosad and Jannes Muenchow (2019). Geocomputation with R. The R Series. CRC Press.
This book has been published by CRC Press in the R Series. The online version of this book is free to read at https://geocompr.robinlovelace.net/.
There are a few things to prepare before attempting these exercises.
Make sure you have a decent computer with enough battery life to last the duration of the course.
This tutorial assumes you have installed a recent version of R, an editor you’re comfortable with (we recommend RStudio), and the necessary packages. If you fail to get the software installed, you can run RStudio in Binder the button at github.com/geocompr/RGSWorkshop:
However, we recommend installing R on your computer before you begin so you can take control of your computing (that binder instance is not for real world applications and you should learn to use R ‘in the wild’).
To install R on your computer, check out the guidance here: https://geocompr.robinlovelace.net/spatial-class.html#prerequisites
If you’re a complete R beginner, it is strongly recommend that you spend some time reading about R and undertaking an introductory tutorial. Good places to start include:
- Getting started notes from RStudio: https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/201141096-Getting-Started-with-R
- Information on where to look to learn R: https://csgillespie.github.io/efficientR/learning.html
- The free datacamp course: https://www.datacamp.com/courses/free-introduction-to-r
- An introduction to “Why use R for geographic data?”: https://geocompr.robinlovelace.net/intro.html#why-use-r-for-geocomputation
The packages we’ll can be installed as follows[1]:
install.packages("sf")
install.packages("spData")All the packages needed to reproduce the contents of the book can be
installed with the following command:
devtools::install_github("geocompr/geocompkg") (note: all this will
take some time to run - recommended to do before the course). The
necessary packages can be ‘loaded’ (technically they are attached) with
the library() function as follows:
library(sf) # classes and functions for vector data
library(spData) # contains example dataIn R geographic data is just an object like any other. R’s basic data analysis object type is the data frame, which looks like this:
world
#> Simple feature collection with 177 features and 10 fields
#> geometry type: MULTIPOLYGON
#> dimension: XY
#> bbox: xmin: -180 ymin: -90 xmax: 180 ymax: 83.64513
#> epsg (SRID): 4326
#> proj4string: +proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +no_defs
#> First 10 features:
#> iso_a2 name_long continent region_un subregion
#> 1 FJ Fiji Oceania Oceania Melanesia
#> 2 TZ Tanzania Africa Africa Eastern Africa
#> 3 EH Western Sahara Africa Africa Northern Africa
#> 4 CA Canada North America Americas Northern America
#> 5 US United States North America Americas Northern America
#> 6 KZ Kazakhstan Asia Asia Central Asia
#> 7 UZ Uzbekistan Asia Asia Central Asia
#> 8 PG Papua New Guinea Oceania Oceania Melanesia
#> 9 ID Indonesia Asia Asia South-Eastern Asia
#> 10 AR Argentina South America Americas South America
#> type area_km2 pop lifeExp gdpPercap
#> 1 Sovereign country 19289.97 885806 69.96000 8222.254
#> 2 Sovereign country 932745.79 52234869 64.16300 2402.099
#> 3 Indeterminate 96270.60 NA NA NA
#> 4 Sovereign country 10036042.98 35535348 81.95305 43079.143
#> 5 Country 9510743.74 318622525 78.84146 51921.985
#> 6 Sovereign country 2729810.51 17288285 71.62000 23587.338
#> 7 Sovereign country 461410.26 30757700 71.03900 5370.866
#> 8 Sovereign country 464520.07 7755785 65.23000 3709.082
#> 9 Sovereign country 1819251.33 255131116 68.85600 10003.089
#> 10 Sovereign country 2784468.59 42981515 76.25200 18797.548
#> geom
#> 1 MULTIPOLYGON (((180 -16.067...
#> 2 MULTIPOLYGON (((33.90371 -0...
#> 3 MULTIPOLYGON (((-8.66559 27...
#> 4 MULTIPOLYGON (((-122.84 49,...
#> 5 MULTIPOLYGON (((-122.84 49,...
#> 6 MULTIPOLYGON (((87.35997 49...
#> 7 MULTIPOLYGON (((55.96819 41...
#> 8 MULTIPOLYGON (((141.0002 -2...
#> 9 MULTIPOLYGON (((141.0002 -2...
#> 10 MULTIPOLYGON (((-68.63401 -...To plot geographic data, do:
plot(world)
- If you’re running Mac or Linux, the previous command to install sf may not work first time. These operating systems (OSs) have ‘systems requirements’ that are described in the package’s README. Various OS-specific instructions can be found online, such as the article Installation of R 3.5 on Ubuntu 18.04 on the blog rtask.thinkr.fr.