[R-sig-Geo] European Union NUTS2, NUTS3 regions (SHP format)

[Barry Rowlingson]

2010/8/27 Tomas Zelinsky <tomas.zelinsky at tuke.sk>:
> Hello,
>
> you probably know administrative maps of the EU and their availability (both
> SHP and GDB) via
> http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/gisco/popups/references/administrative_units_statistical_units_1
> .
>
> Basically there are three administrative levels in one map (NUTS 1, 2 and 3
> levels).
>
> 1. Is there any possibility how to make NUTS3 level borderlines invisible if
> my aim is to e.g. analyze NUTS2 level?
>
> 2. Or is it possible to make e.g. NUTS1 level borderlines thicker than the
> other?

 Looking at NUTS_RG_60M_2006.SHP there's a STAT_LEVL_ variable which I
guess is the NUTS level code - this is probably documented in the
meta-data somewhere. So you can do:

 require(rgdal)
 s = readOGR(".","NUTS_RG_60M_2006")
 plot(s[s$STAT_LEVL_==0,])
 plot(s[s$STAT_LEVL_==1,])

 and so on. You might also want to extract just the polygons for a
particular level into a new object:

 n2 = s[s$STAT_LEVL_==2,]

 You can use lwd=X in plot for sp objects to change the line width.

Barry