Use bcdata as backend for relevant layers

[stephhazlitt]

Is it worth thinking about the future use cases of bcmaps versus bcdata? For map layers available with bcdata should users use that package to ensure always grabbing the most up-to-date versions (without any tinkering with bcmapsdata)? Perhaps bcmaps becomes the home for open layers from the 🇨🇦 open data catalogue, maps not available via WMS/WFS, and a set of helper functions (e.g. bc_neighbours())? Thoughts @ateucher @boshek?

[boshek]

I think this is a good idea to at least evaluate where we might have duplication. I wonder if to avoid breaking any old code, we could simply use bcdata on the backend for any layers that we didn't want to include? Here is a list that we could use to ID those that aren't likely to change. We could check those that

• [ ] airzones British Columbia Air Zones
• [x] bc_bound BC Boundary
• [x] bc_bound_hres BC Boundary - High Resolution
• [ ] bc_cities BC Major Cities Points 1:2,000,000 (Digital Baseline Mapping)
• [x] bc_neighbours British Columbia and neighbouring features
• [ ] ecoprovinces British Columbia Ecoprovinces
• [ ] ecoregions British Columbia Ecoregions
• [ ] ecosections British Columbia Ecosections
• [ ] gw_aquifers British Columbia's developed ground water aquifers
• [ ] hydrozones Hydrologic Zone Boundaries of British Columbia
• [ ] municipalities British Columbia Municipalities
• [ ] nr_areas British Columbia Natural Resource (NR) Areas
• [ ] nr_districts British Columbia Natural Resource (NR) Districts
• [ ] nr_regions British Columbia Natural Resource (NR) Regions
• [ ] regional_districts British Columbia Regional Districts
• [ ] water_districts British Columbia's Water Management Districts
• [ ] water_precincts British Columbia's Water Management Precincts
• [x] watercourses_15M British Columbia watercourses at 1:15M scale
• [ ] watercourses_5M British Columbia watercourses at 1:5M scale
• [x] wsc_drainages Water Survey of Canada Sub-Sub-Drainage Areas
• [ ] bec British Columbia BEC Map
• [ ] tsa B.C. Timber Supply Areas & TSA Block

[stephhazlitt]

I totally agree we do not want to break code. I am also thinking of how we might help/promote users to update code using bcdata when appropriate. Was thinking a deprecated WARNING with some bread crumbs to lead ppl to bcdata might be one approach for those layers where bcdata is the obvious new kid on the block?

[boshek]

This seems like a great approach. Once bcdata is on CRAN, this seems viable.

[stephhazlitt]

Some thoughts on how to implement this if caching in bcdata is not available, and considering the challenge of no resource date-stamp:

• use bcdata as the back-end for the catalogue layers and implement caching of downloaded layer in bcmaps • rather than checking for new versions of downloaded data, provide the user with date of initial download and length of time that has passed Hey - it has been awhile since you pulled this data layer, maybe consider refreshing? • for watercourses*() and bc_bound_hres() layers, house them in the bcmaps() package (assuming size is reasonable?) and set-up an issue open action for letting package maintainers know that new versions have been released in the The Canadian Open Data Portal. MVP of this here.

[boshek]

What I have just realized is that we can very readily leverage the downloading capabilities build by @ateucher here: https://github.com/bcgov/bcmaps/blob/master/R/download_data.R

[ateucher]

I kind of forgot about that! Maybe doing the caching in bcmaps is the answer, as caching in bcdata is more complicated due to the querying...

[boshek]

WIP #60