First steps in spatial handling and visualization

Instructors: Sébastien Rochette, Dorris Scott, Jakub Nowosad

Tutorial purpose

The tutorial is designed for R users from a variety of fields who are interested in working with spatial data and creating maps with R. No knowledge of cartography is required. Prior knowledge of (non-spatial) graphic making and data handling with the {tidyverse} in R is recommended.

Content of this repository

• slides_user2020_rspatial.pdf: PDF version of the slides.
• data/: Shapefiles and data used in the slides and in the exercises. These data includes a csvs file of restaurants of St. Louis and points of interest along with a boundary file of St. Louis neighborhoods. Please consult the README document in the data folder for more information about the specific datasets.
• exo_explore_saint_louis.Rmd: R markdown file of the exercises.
• explore_saint_louis.html: Output of the exercises when completed.
• answers/: Answers to the tutorial exercises.

How it was planned

• 3 instructors: Sébastien Rochette, Dorris Scott, Jakub Nowosad
• 3 facilitators: Shelmith Kariuki, Christopher Maronga, Mark Okello
• 3 hours tutorial
• 3 parts:
  • Tutorial presentation, Draw maps with {tmap}, What are spatial data?
  • Read/write spatial vector data, Manipulate vector data with the {tidyverse}
  • Manipulate and intersect spatial data
• 3 times 1 hour: ~33’ presentation + 2’ quizz + 20’ exercises + 5’ break
• 1 e-learning platform provided by ThinkR

Notes for the future:

• Knowledge of {dplyr} and manipulation of classical tidy datasets prior to the tutorial is necessary.
• To give this tutorial would require 3.5 hours for attendees to have enough practice.
• “What if the first thing you do when you have problems with your spatial dataset?” quizz may require a small discussion. Although, projections will be the source of the majority of your problems…

What can you do after this tutorial?

• Practice again, finish the exercises, and try the BONUS parts. All answers are in answers/ directory, but I am sure you know enough to do most of the exercises without the answers. Yes you can!

• Have the Geocomputation with R by Robin Lovelace, Jakub Nowosad and Jannes Muenchow as a bookmark

• Find some spatial tips and examples of maps on my blog: https://statnmap.com

• Follow #rspatial on Twitter and ask your questions to the community

• Follow #RSpatialChat on Tuesday’s on Twitter lead by @CivicAngela

• Join R4DS Slack community, there is a rspatial channel

• There is a Telegram group in Spanish: RSpatial_ES