First steps in spatial handling and visualization

This repository contains the course material of our useR! 2020 tutorial. You can watch the video (with english subtitles) of the presentation parts (when we present the slides) on the Youtube RConsortium channel there: https://youtu.be/1Hp8MO82t4g

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 the help-6-spatial channel

• There is a Telegram group in Spanish: RSpatial_ES