Macrosystems EDDIE

Module 6: Understanding Uncertainty in Ecological Forecasts

Summary

Here is the code for running the Macrosystems EDDIE Module 6: Understanding Uncertainty in Ecological Forecasts. Below are instructions on how to access the Shiny app via a web browser and also a detailed guide below for launching the R Shiny App locally on your own computer. For more details about teaching this module, please visit our website.

Accessing the Shiny App via a web browser

The Shiny app for this module can be accessed through any internet browser on shinyapps.io. When launching for the first time, it may take a while for the Shiny app to boot up. If you are using this module in a large class (>50 users at the same time), you may consider asking students to run the module locally on their own computers (see instructions below).

Running the Shiny App on your computer

Pre-requisites

1. Latest version of R installed.
2. RStudio installed (preferably >1.3).

Step 1: Download this repository

There are two options:

1. Download the repository as a .zip file. (Easiest option).
   a. Click the green "Code" button on this page and select "Download ZIP".
   b. Unzip this file on your computer.
2. Clone this repository into RStudio.
   a. Open RStudio.
   b. Click "File > New Project...".
   c. In the "Create Project dialog select "Version Control: Checkout a project from a version control repository".
   d. Select "Git: Clone a project from a Git repository".
   e. In the "Repository URL:" option input the URL to this repository, select where to save the project directory.
   f. Click "Create Project".
   g. You will then have a project with all the files from this repository.

Step 2: Install required R packages

1. The list of required of packages is detailed in the install.R script in this repository. Open and run this script to install the necessary packages.
   Watch out for errors in package installation. Most can be avoided using the most up-to-date version of R.
   Updating of current R packages on your system is recommended.

Step 3: Launch Shiny App

1. Open the script app/server.R in your console. It is found in the app directory
2. Click the "Run App" button in the Script (indicated below).
3. This will launch the Shiny App in your default web browser or in a new RStudio window. The Shiny App is run from RStudio so you will need to keep RStudio running in the background.
   

Quickstart option

Here is an alternative way to quickly launch the Shiny app in less than a minute, but can be prone to package installation errors if your packages have not been updated recently.

# Step 1. Install required R packages
source("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MacrosystemsEDDIE/module6/main/install.R")

# Step 2. Launch Shiny app
shiny::runGitHub("module6", "MacrosystemsEDDIE", ref = "main", subdir = "app")

Questions & Feedback

If you have any questions, comments or feedback related to these materials, you can email macrosystemseddie@gmail.com.