Open source workflow in R for spatial data and analysis

[jamiecmontgomery]

What are the best workflows and packages for spatial data and analyses?

We do a lot of geospatial processing in the Ocean Health Index (see Issue #28), and we would like to streamline our workflow and to ensure all our analysis is done on open source platforms, ideally R. We currently do some spatial analyses in R using packages such as raster, sp, maps, rgdal, and more, but we still rely heavily on Python and ArcGIS because of limitations we have encountered in R (e.g., dealing with large shapefiles, etc.).

If this is a problem others encounter often enough, it would be great to develop an effort to do/discuss/improve either or all of the following:

• Is it possible to develop methods so spatial vector objects (i.e., shapefiles, etc.) aren’t read into the working memory, similar to the way that the raster package deals with raster files?
• Identify limitations to spatial analysis in R and identify workarounds to these issues
• Best approaches for integrating QGIS/Python/R

If this gains interest I'm happy to have this topic take a form that's most conducive to the community

[karthik]

I'd be interested in this discussion.

[karthik]

This went on CRAN yesterday: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rgrass7/index.html Quite relevant to this discussion.

[sckott]

@jafflerbach Good idea, i'm interested. In addition, I've been working on some geo utilities pkgs recently (geojsonio, lawn, wellknown, proj, http://ropensci.org/packages/#geospatial), so I'd be interested to hear what I can do with those to support use cases you have.

[lmullen]

@jafflerbach I'd be very interested in this session.

On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 1:12 PM, Scott Chamberlain <notifications@github.com

wrote:

@jafflerbach https://github.com/jafflerbach Good idea, i'm interested. In addition, I've been working on some geo utilities pkgs recently (geojsonio, lawn, wellknown, proj, http://ropensci.org/packages/#geospatial), so I'd be interested to hear what I can do with those to support use cases you have.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ropensci/unconf/issues/29#issuecomment-78309068.

[ekansa]

I'm interested in learning more too, since we're publishing lots of geospatial data (https://github.com/ekansa/open-context-py and http://opencontext.dainst.org/). It would be very useful to know what people need to do analyses with confidence.

[jamiecmontgomery]

I've been working with @jcheng5 a bit on integrating rasters into leaflet and it'd be great to continue the spatial data + R conversation with those interested today...

@sckott @lmullen @ekansa @jules32 @jread-usgs and others?

maybe after lunch?

[karthik]

I'm in too.

[jhollist]

I will follow along from afar. The raster s in leaflet is a great idea! Interested in hearing more. On Mar 27, 2015 1:36 PM, "Karthik Ram" notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm in too.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ropensci/unconf/issues/29#issuecomment-87026224.

[sckott]

i'm in, thanks @jafflerbach

[jordansread]

ready whenever

[jamiecmontgomery]

congregating in the back of the room now for those interested

[jhollist]

I am really interested in the results of this conversation. If there are any notes taken, I would love to see them after the fact.

[timelyportfolio]

+1

[jordansread]

here is the geo processing engine I was describing: https://github.com/USGS-CIDA/geo-data-portal @jcheng5 and a front-end: http://cida.usgs.gov/gdp/

[jordansread]

Joe had some cool stuff w/ shiny+leaflet+raster+geojson

[jordansread]

Link to @jcheng5 - https://github.com/rstudio/leaflet/tree/raster

[jcheng5]

Example for rstudio/leaflet raster branch: https://gist.github.com/jcheng5/a1c48a18d0ea3623c0e6

[jhollist]

Thanks for the links @jread-usgs and @jcheng5 On Mar 27, 2015 6:20 PM, "Jordan S Read" notifications@github.com wrote:

Link to @jcheng5 https://github.com/jcheng5 - https://github.com/rstudio/leaflet/tree/raster

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ropensci/unconf/issues/29#issuecomment-87106591.

[sckott]

@jafflerbach @jcheng5 where is this at now? I assume the thing to follow is https://github.com/jcheng5/rasterfaster ?

[jcheng5]

Yes. I'm just now turning my attention back to leaflet after focusing on a different project the last few weeks.

[sckott]

Great, thanks!