vg250

vg250 aims to provide access to VG250 dataset in order to derive spatial information for a chosen administrative level for various applications.

Since I found myself in the need of spatial information on a municipality level (geometry, extent, centroids) for convenience reasons quite often, the decision was made to centralize associated data and functions based on {sf} in a separate package to simplify maintenance.

Installation

You can install the development version of vg250 with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("dimfalk/vg250")

Basic examples

Just a few quick insights on the use of this package:

library(vg250)
#> 0.5.6

# fetch data
name <- "Aachen"

ext <- get_extent(name)
buff <- get_extent(name, buffer = 5000)
geom <- get_geometry(name)
p <- get_centroid(name)

# check classes
class(ext)
#> [1] "sfc_POLYGON" "sfc"

class(buff)
#> [1] "sfc_POLYGON" "sfc"

class(geom)
#> [1] "sfc_POLYGON" "sfc"

class(p)
#> [1] "sfc_POINT" "sfc"

# inspect visually
library(ggplot2)

ggplot() + 
  geom_sf(data = buff) + 
  geom_sf(data = ext, col = "green") + 
  geom_sf(data = geom, col = "red") + 
  geom_sf(data = p, col = "blue")

This information can now be used to e.g. create masks to crop raster data, select vector features, perform spatial joins, construct API calls, etc.

# convert to SpatExtent object when working with `{terra}`
terra::vect(ext) |> terra::ext()
#> SpatExtent : 5.9748614, 6.2169125, 50.6627898, 50.8573535 (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)

# select vector features by p
sf::st_filter(vg250, p)
#> Simple feature collection with 1 feature and 5 fields
#> Geometry type: MULTIPOLYGON
#> Dimension:     XY
#> Bounding box:  xmin: 5.974861 ymin: 50.66279 xmax: 6.216912 ymax: 50.85735
#> Geodetic CRS:  WGS 84
#>      GEM                 KRS                 LAN    EWZ    KFL
#> 1 Aachen Städteregion Aachen Nordrhein-Westfalen 252136 160.85
#>                             geom
#> 1 MULTIPOLYGON (((6.057066 50...

# join attributes spatially to p
sf::st_intersection(vg250, p)
#> Simple feature collection with 1 feature and 5 fields
#> Geometry type: POINT
#> Dimension:     XY
#> Bounding box:  xmin: 6.109002 ymin: 50.76053 xmax: 6.109002 ymax: 50.76053
#> Geodetic CRS:  WGS 84
#>         GEM                 KRS                 LAN    EWZ    KFL
#> 2145 Aachen Städteregion Aachen Nordrhein-Westfalen 252136 160.85
#>                           geom
#> 2145 POINT (6.109002 50.76053)

# construct API queries
sf::st_bbox(ext) |> as.numeric() |> round(4) |> paste0(collapse = ",") |> paste0("&bbox=", x = _)
#> [1] "&bbox=5.9749,50.6628,6.2169,50.8574"

Note: The VG250 dataset itself can be accessed via vg250:

vg250
#> Simple feature collection with 10990 features and 5 fields
#> Geometry type: GEOMETRY
#> Dimension:     XY
#> Bounding box:  xmin: 5.86625 ymin: 47.27012 xmax: 15.04182 ymax: 55.05878
#> Geodetic CRS:  WGS 84
#> First 10 features:
#>                    GEM          KRS                LAN    EWZ    KFL
#> 1            Flensburg    Flensburg Schleswig-Holstein  92550  56.73
#> 2                 Kiel         Kiel Schleswig-Holstein 247717 118.65
#> 3               Lübeck       Lübeck Schleswig-Holstein 218095 214.19
#> 4           Neumünster   Neumünster Schleswig-Holstein  79502  71.66
#> 5          Brunsbüttel Dithmarschen Schleswig-Holstein  12603  65.21
#> 6                Heide Dithmarschen Schleswig-Holstein  22114  31.97
#> 7              Averlak Dithmarschen Schleswig-Holstein    570   9.06
#> 8             Brickeln Dithmarschen Schleswig-Holstein    198   6.07
#> 9             Buchholz Dithmarschen Schleswig-Holstein   1001  14.56
#> 10 Burg (Dithmarschen) Dithmarschen Schleswig-Holstein   4206  11.25
#>                              geom
#> 1  MULTIPOLYGON (((9.412137 54...
#> 2  MULTIPOLYGON (((10.16852 54...
#> 3  MULTIPOLYGON (((10.87526 53...
#> 4  MULTIPOLYGON (((9.991971 54...
#> 5  MULTIPOLYGON (((9.166074 53...
#> 6  MULTIPOLYGON (((9.121658 54...
#> 7  MULTIPOLYGON (((9.212443 53...
#> 8  MULTIPOLYGON (((9.255627 54...
#> 9  MULTIPOLYGON (((9.182763 53...
#> 10 MULTIPOLYGON (((9.277097 54...