R Maps

September 6, 2010

(This article was first published on Spatial Analysis » R, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)

This is an updated version of my Making Maps with R tutorial. I think the code is lot simpler and it also includes some data for you to play around with.

Background:

Spatial data are becoming increasingly common, as are the tools available in R to process it. Of course one of the best ways of visualizing spatial data is through a map. Maps need to be well thought out. Not least, the selected colours need to be appropriate and sufficient context is provided through the use of a legend, title, scale bar and north arrow. The worksheet will demonstrate how to produce a map with R that includes all these elements.

Data Requirements:

London Sport Participation Shapefile. Download (requires unzipping)

Install the following packages (if you haven’t already done so):

maptools, RColorBrewer, classInt