GeRgraphyPresentation

GeRgraphy: an Introduction to Spatial Data Manipulation and Analysis in R

by Dave Evans and Aaron Ruesch

Description:

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are useful for storing, manipulating, and analyzing spatial data, but most GIS users interact with their data using graphical user interfaces (i.e., GUIs), which are limited in their ability to automate data processing tasks, facilitate tabular data manipulation, and import user-contributed statistical libraries. A number of packages have been developed in the R framework that fill this void. We will discuss spatial data types and their structures, along with discussions and examples of data input/output, modeling, munging, and plotting/mapping of spatial data in R.

Bios:

Dave Evans is a GIS analyst and developer-in-training with the State Legislature. Dave has 3 years of experience with R. He first learned R during his master's research when he was constructing models of soil properties.

Aaron Ruesch is a Water Resources Modeler at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. He uses R for it's wide variety of easy-to-use statistical and data formatting packages that allow him to create water quality models of lakes and rivers much faster and with very little headache. His education focused on geoanalytical environmental science with a BS and MS from two UWs--University of Wisconsin and University of Washington.