shapeR

shapeR aims to simplify GIS mapping by giving access through simple R functions to shapefiles from different sources.

The list of available shapefiles is shown in the following table:

Regions	Sources
World	https://www.naturalearthdata.com/
Countries	https://gadm.org/download_world.html

Installation

You can install the current development version of ‘shapeR’ with:

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("warint/shapeR")

How-To

Step 1: Getting the country’s ISO code

A user needs to enter the ISO code of a country. To have access to this code, the following function provides this information.

shaper_country() # A list of all countries will be produced

shaper_country(country = "Canada") # The ISO code for Canada will be produced

shaper_country("Canada") # The ISO code for Canada will be produced

Step 2: Choosing the shapefile’s level of granularity

Users can visualize which level is available for the choosen country here: https://gadm.org/download_country_v3.html

The level goes from 1 to 5, with 0 being the country level. You can access the metadata here: https://gadm.org/metadata.html

Be aware that not all countries have the five levels of granularity.

Step 3: Getting the data

Once the user knows the ISO code and the wanted level, s.he can collect the data in a very easy way through this function:

shaper_data(country_code = "CAN") # The shapefile for Canada with level 0 (the default) will be produced

shaper_data(country_code = "CAN", level = 3) # The shapefile for Canada with level 3 will be produced

shaper_data("CAN", 3) # The shapefile for Canada with level 3 will be produced

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis of Organizations (CIRANO, Montreal) for its support, as well as Thibault Senegas, Marine Leroi, and artin Paquette. The usual caveats apply.