Geographical data with R

R has many tools to deal with Geo-spatial data. We will introduce the essentials to get you up and started.

Mac Users

Follow the following steps:

Download GDAL complete
Doubleclick and install the .dmg file as you are used to on a Mac
Proceed to Installing Additonal R Packages

Hat-tip

We borrowed heavily from Nick Eubank's installation guide for 'Spatial Data in R' to assist in the Mac installation. Nick's install guide is available here.

Linux Users

Follow these steps:

In your terminal type the following, then hit Return

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ppa && sudo apt-get update

Hit enter when prompted, then enter the following before again hitting the Return key:
```
sudo apt-get install gdal-bin
```

To verify after installation, try entering ogrinfo into the a terminal then press Return. If the installation was successful, you will see something like this:

Usage: ogrinfo [--help-general] [-ro] [-q] [-where restricted_where]
               [-spat xmin ymin xmax ymax] [-fid fid]
               [-sql statement] [-al] [-so] [-fields={YES/NO}]
               [-geom={YES/NO/SUMMARY}][--formats]
               datasource_name [layer [layer ...]]

Proceed to Installing Additonal R Packages

Hat-tip

We borrowed heavily from Sara Safavi to learn how to install GDAL on Ubuntu. She provides an install guide here.

Windows Users

Success

For once, Windows is ahead of the game. We only need to install R packages!

Installing Additional R Packages

We will need some additional libraries to conduct our GIS analysis. Proceed as follows:

Open RStudio
In the console, copy and paste the following:

uzh_gistools <- c("rgeos", "ggmap", "sf",
                    "sp", "raster", "tmaptools",
                    "rgdal", "gdalUtils", "mapview", "tmap")

install.packages(uzh_gistools)

rgdal problems with Mac

There were quite a few issues with GDAL and rgdal for Mac users. We found this stackoverflow post that seemed to solve most problems. You may find it useful in the problem