RArcInfo {RArcInfo}R Documentation

RArcInfo

Description

This package allows the user to import into R binary coverages in format Arc/Info V 7.x. These coverages represent geographical data in several forms: points, lines, polygons, point labels, etc.

RArcInfo uses the library AVCE00, written by Daniel Morissette, to whom I would thank fo his marvelous work. But RArcInfo is much more than a wrapper of this library, because it provides functions to plot the data and draw maps.

Since the geographical data are separated into several files, RArcInfo provides a different function to read each file. These functions are called get.XXXdata, where XXX is the file name to open (usually the extension is 'adf'):

  • get.arcdata

    ARC files contain arcs definition and their vertices.

  • get.bnddata

    BND files contain coordinates for the boundary of the data.

  • get.cntdata

    CNT files contain polygon centroid information.

  • get.labdata

    LAB files contain label point records.

  • get.paldata

    PAL files contain the polygon definitions.

  • get.toldata

    TOL files contain the tolerance values that were used when processing the polygon coverage.

  • get.txtdata

    TXT files contain annotations (or labels) about the data.

    Besides these files, binary coverage store several tables containing additional information (like name of the city, population, etc.). To get this data, RArcInfo provides the next functions:

  • get.tablenames

    Gets all the table names and the coverage each table belongs to.

  • get.tablefields

    Gets the names of the fields for a given table.

  • get.tabledata

    Gets the data stored in the table.

    In order to plot the data, RArcInfo has several functions:

  • plotarc

    Plots all the arcs.

  • plotpal

    Plots all the polygons.

  • plotpoly

    Like plotpal, but it allows to select the polygons we want to plot, colour and other stuff. This is useful to plot maps according the value of some covariate.

    To get all the names of the coverages, the user can call 'get.namesofcoverages'.

    Other two interesting functions are:

  • thinlines

    Useful to reduce the number of points in an arc according to a given tolerance.

  • get.nb

    Calculates the neighbouring polygons of a given set of polygons.

    References

    V. Gómez-Rubio and A. López-Quílez (2005). RArcInfo: Using GIS data with R. Computers & Geosciences 3(8), 1000-1006.

    More information about this kind of data can be found at http://pages.infinit.net/danmo/e00/docs/v7_bin_cover.html.

    See Also

    get.arcdata, get.bnddata, get.cntdata, get.labdata, get.paldata, get.toldata, get.txtdata, get.tablenames, get.tablefields, get.tabledata, get.namesofcoverages, read.coverage, thinlines, get.nb

    Examples

    
    #See example(plotpoly) for another example
    
    library(RArcInfo)
    
    datadir<-system.file("exampleData",package="RArcInfo")
    infodir<-system.file("exampleData","info",package="RArcInfo")
    coveragedir<-system.file("exampleData","wetlands",package="RArcInfo")
    
    #get.bnddata needs the last slash...
    infodir<-paste(c(infodir,"/"), collapse="")
    
    #List all the tables
    
    covnames<-get.namesofcoverages(datadir)
    tablenames<-get.tablenames(infodir)
    
    #Display the name of the table and its fields
    for(i in 1:length(tablenames[[1]]))
    {
            print(c("Table: ",tablenames$TableName[i]))
    
            fields<-get.tablefields(infodir,tablenames$TableName[i])
            print("Fields")
            for(j in 1:length(fields))
                    print(fields[[j]][1])
    
            #Get the data
            if(i==1)
                    tabledata<-get.tabledata(infodir,tablenames$TableName[i])
            else
                    tabledata<-c(tabledata, get.tabledata(infodir,tablenames$TableName[i]) )
    }
    
    #Import data from some tables
    arc<-get.arcdata(datadir,"wetlands")
    pal<-get.paldata(datadir,"wetlands")
    lab<-get.labdata(datadir,"wetlands")
    cnt<-get.cntdata(datadir,"wetlands")
    
    bnd<-get.bnddata(infodir,"WETLANDS.BND")
    
    print("Plotting all the arcs")
    plotarc(arc)
    
    print("Plotting the first ten polygons (in red) on the previous plot")
    par(col="red")
    plotpal(arc,pal,new=FALSE, index=1:10)
    

    [Package RArcInfo version 0.4-7 Index]