[R-sig-Geo] Cleaning topology in R spatial objects - R or GIS task?

[Anne Ghisla]

Dear all,

during kernel LSCV calculation for home range estimation (kernelUD, package 
adehabitat) I encountered a problem related to topology.
One homerange is made of 5 polygons, but one of them has a null area: it is in 
fact a little line. The other polygons have some dangling arcs. 
R displays the homerange without warnings, then exports it as shapefile. As 
the shapefile is imported into a Postgis database, the wrong topology becomes 
a serious problem.

I know that topology operations are typical GIS tasks.
Could it be useful to add to R functions basic tools like clean/build topology 
of its spatial objects, even if it causes code duplication (in fact R spatial 
objects are quite always imported into a GIS)?

All the best,

Anne Ghisla
Università dell'Insubria, Varese