gissr is a collection of R functions which make working with spatial data easier.

The development version:

# Install dependency
devtools::install_github("skgrange/threadr")

# Install gissr
devtools::install_github("skgrange/gissr")

1. Travis builds are breaking because of the package's dependence on system-spatial packages; needs to be resolved.
2. Do some more unit testing
3. Get package on CRAN

R's spatial data analysis abilities are very well developed. Therefore, R can be used as an effective geographical information system (GIS). A key advantage of R in GIS applications is that the user can dip in-and-out of R's general string, numerical, and visualisation tools and apply them to spatial data.

However, the challenges I have with using R as a GIS are:

• Keeping track of the multiple packages which are used,
• the lack of consistency among these packages, and
• the lack of tidy outputs which other areas of the R ecosystem have been so good at developing.

To overcome these points, I have written wrappers for many geographical functions which generally begin sp_ to do particular tasks and bundled all the dependencies together as a package. Some of these functions will likely be useful for others.

• Read shapefiles, GPX, GeoJSON, KML, GML, TAB, and File Geodatabases with sp_read, a wrapper for rgdal::readOGR.
  • Also check spatial file and system things with sp_list_drivers, sp_list_layers, and sp_layer_info.
• Transform projection systems with sp_transform.
  • sp_transform can also force projections when a spatial object has none.
  • transform_coordinates does a similar thing, but for data frames.
• Transform data frames (tables) to spatial objects with:
  • data_frame_to_points,
  • data_frame_to_lines, and
  • data_frame_to_polygons.
• Bind/combine spatial objects with sp_bind and sp_bind_many.
• Calculate lengths or areas of spatial objects with sp_area and sp_length.
• Transform a data frame with a well known text (WKT) variable (or just a vector) to a spatial object with sp_from_wkt.
• Clip or crop a spatial object to an rectangular envelope with sp_crop.
  • To filter objects by other polygons, use [ subsetting.
    • Rectangular or elliptical polygons can be created with sp_create_envelope and sp_ellipse for this purpose too.
• "Dissolve" polygons to make a single feature with sp_dissolve_polygons.
• "Punch" holes in polygons with sp_punch.
• Add a positive or negative buffer with sp_buffer.
• Create enclosing polygons with sp_convex_hull.
• Find centroids of geometries with sp_centroid.
• "Promote" or "demote" Spatial* to Spatial*DataFrame, i.e. add or drop data slots for geometries with sp_promote and sp_demote.
• Return and reset geometry IDs with sp_feature_ids and sp_reset_feature_ids.
• Export spatial objects to spatial files with write_gpx, write_geojson, and write_shapefile.

• Point-in-polygon tests with left_join_spatial.
• Calculate distances among spatial objects with sp_distance.
  • distance_by_haversine does the same thing, but with a different method, and for data frames.
• Simplify spatial objects with sp_simplify.
• Fix issues with spatial objects with sp_fix. This function is a blatant wrap of cleangeo::clgeo_Clean. This function is a good piece of work so make sure you have a look at the cleangeo package.