openairmaps: tools to create maps of air pollution data

The main goal of {openairmaps} is to combine the robust analytical methods found in openair with the highly capable {leaflet} package. {openairmaps} is thoroughly documented in the openair book.

Installation

You can install the release version of {openairmaps} from CRAN with:

install.packages("openairmaps")

You can install the development version of {openairmaps} from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("davidcarslaw/openairmaps")

Overview

library(openairmaps)

The openairmaps package is thoroughly documented in the openair book, which goes into great detail about its various functions. Functionality includes visualising UK AQ networks (networkMap()), putting “polar directional markers” on maps (e.g., polarMap()) and overlaying HYSPLIT trajectories on maps (e.g., trajMap()), all using the {leaflet} package.

polar_data %>%
  openair::cutData("daylight") %>%
  buildPopup(
    c("site", "site_type"),
    names = c("Site" = "site", "Site Type" = "site_type"),
    control = "daylight"
  ) %>%
  polarMap(
    pollutant = "no2",
    limits = c(0, 180),
    control = "daylight",
    popup = "popup"
  )

An example `polarMap()` showing NO2 concentrations in central London.

While an interactive map is preferred for exploratory directional analysis, it is limited to the HTML format. Some applications (for example, academic journals) demand “static” formats like .docx and .pdf. For this reason, “static” versions of {openairmaps} polar marker functions have been provided which are written in {ggplot2}. A benefit of being written in {ggplot2} is that additional layers can be added (e.g., geom_label() could be used to label sites) and limited further customisation is available using theme() and guides().

Static maps require users to provide a ggmap tileset, which at the time of writing requires an API key for either Google or Stadia Maps.