Dear R-SIG readers,

The European Union is promoting the use of open source software and standards. As a R-user that's certainly positive, but it also creates new challenges. One open format that is used by EU is GML, a "geographically XML" format. It's possible to import (or export) a GML-file with ESRI's ArcGIS software, but does anyone of you have any experience importing GML-files into R? Maybe into a spatialPolygonDataframe object (given that the GML contain polygon data)? I have included the beginning of one of the GML-files I'm using below.

Thanks,

Hans Gardfjell
Department of Forest Resource Management
SLU, Sweden



Example of the beginning of a GML-file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gml:FeatureCollection
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://biodiversity.eionet.europa.eu/schemas/dir9243eec/gml_art17.xsd"
xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml"
xmlns:met="http://biodiversity.eionet.europa.eu/schemas/dir9243eec">
<gml:metaDataProperty>
<met:info href="map-distribution-9170.gml">
<met:mapOwner label="Owner of the map">
<met:organisationName label="Organisation name"></met:organisationName>
***
Some Metadata removed
***
</met:datasetsRetrievedFrom><met:projection label="ESRI projection metadata">PROJCS[&quot;ETRS_1989_LAEA&quot;,GEOGCS[&quot;GCS_ETRS_1989&quot;,DATUM[&quot;D_ETRS_1989&quot;,SPHEROID[&quot;GRS_1980&quot;,6378137.0,298.257222101]],PRIMEM[&quot;Greenwich&quot;,0.0],UNIT[&quot;Degree&quot;,0.0174532925199433]],PROJECTION[&quot;Lambert_Azimuthal_Equal_Area&quot;],PARAMETER[&quot;False_Easting&quot;,4321000.0],PARAMETER[&quot;False_Northing&quot;,3210000.0],PARAMETER[&quot;Central_Meridian&quot;,10.0],PARAMETER[&quot;Latitude_Of_Origin&quot;,52.0],UNIT[&quot;Meter&quot;,1.0]]</met:projection>
</met:info>
</gml:metaDataProperty>
<gml:boundedBy>
<gml:Envelope>
<gml:coord>
<gml:X>4500000.22367543</gml:X>
<gml:Y>3620000.00447305</gml:Y>
</gml:coord>
<gml:coord>
<gml:X>4690000.24615209</gml:X>
<gml:Y>3709999.93080836</gml:Y>
</gml:coord>
</gml:Envelope>
</gml:boundedBy

The rest of the file removed...


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