[R-sig-Geo] classify point by nearest polygon

[Rolf Turner]

On 13/02/2011, at 11:07 AM, Corey Chivers wrote:

> I have a large number of points which I would like to associate with
> either the polygon (in my case, lake) they are in or nearest to.  I  
> have
> succeeded in classifying the points which are actually in a polygon
> using overlay().  I have scoured around looking for a solution to
> identifying the nearest neighbor polygon of a point but have not found
> an elegant solution.
>
> There was a thread about this issue back in 2009 ([R-sig-Geo] Finding
> the county shapefile polygon closest to along-lat position), but I was
> unable to implement the suggested workaround and wonder if there  
> isn't a
> better solution known out there.
>
> Thank you in advance for any help/advice you can provide!

There are tools in the spatstat package that will let you accomplish
your objective quite easily.  A little bit of ``fitting together'' of
these tools is required.

Let me know if you are interested and I can give you detailed  
instructions
as to how to do the fitting together.

	cheers,

		Rolf Turner