[R-sig-Geo] mapView: basic interactive viewing of spatial data in R

[Rainer M Krug]

Tim Appelhans <tim.appelhans at gmail.com> writes:

> Dear list members,
>
> I would like to draw your attention to a little 'project' I've been 
> working on over the past few weeks.
>
> Using leaflet for R, I have defined some methods for spatial data (e.g. 
> Raster*, Spatial* objects) to quickly visualise them in either the 
> RStudio Viewer pan or the default web browser. The function I created 
> for this is called mapView().
>
> Think of it as an interactive version of spplot()/plot() for spatial 
> data (though less versatile). It enables zooming, paning and basic layer 
> queries (i.e. printing of the attributes in the @data slot of Spatial* 
> objects + the x/y location of the feature). For Raster* objects queries 
> are currently not available as leaflet translates the data into RGB 
> values for display. Furthermore, background maps can be defined and 
> multiple different spatial object layers can be overlaid.
> At the moment mapView() lives in our Rsenal package on github 
> (https://github.com/environmentalinformatics-marburg/Rsenal) but this is 
> likely going to change at some point in the not too distant future. This 
> also depends on whether there is active interest in developping this 
> sort of thing further to provide more than the current admittedly rather 
> limited functionality. This, however, would involve JavaScript coding 
> which I do not have any experience with.
>
> A quick (non-interactive) intorduction can be found here:
>
> https://metvurst.wordpress.com/
>
> The full introductory article including interactive examples is 
> published here:
>
> http://environmentalinformatics-marburg.github.io/web-presentations/20150723_mapView.html
>
> I hope this may prove useful for some of you.

This looks like something I was really missing! I was always exporting
my spatial data into GRASS and viewing it there - but this looks really
brilliant! This makes out of R a very powerful command line GIS.

I would really like to see this functionality in a separate R package on
CRAN - even with only its current functionality, it is very useful!

Thanks a lot and keep us posted,

Rainer

> Also, if anyone is keen to get involved in taking this further, please 
> let me know and we will see how to best proceed.
>
> Best,
> Tim

-- 
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Stellenbosch University
South Africa

Tel :       +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
Cell:       +33 - (0)6 85 62 59 98
Fax :       +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44

Fax (D):    +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44

email:      Rainer at krugs.de

Skype:      RMkrug

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