Week 12
Reading and writing spatial data files and services
weeks
Summary
This session is focused on learning to read and write a range of spatial data file types and to access spatial data through web services.
Overview
File formats for spatial data have developed and changed over time with different file types serving different specialized needs. Spatial data can also be stored and made accessible through web services running on remote servers. It is helpful to learn how to access data in many different forms and places.
Key Objectives
- Review uses of common data file formats and web services
- Practice downloading spatial data using {RSocrata}
Prepare
Required readings
- Ch. 8 Geographic data I/O in Robin Lovelace, Jakub Nowosad, and Jannes Muenchow Geocomputation with R, 2nd ed. (CRC Press, 2025), https://r.geocompx.org.
- Ch. 20 Spreadsheets in Hadley Wickham, Garrett Grolemund, and Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data, 2nd edition. (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2023), https://r4ds.hadley.nz/.
Optional readings
- Ch. 21 Databases in Wickham, Grolemund, and Çetinkaya-Rundel R for Data Science.
- Tom MacWright “More Than You Ever Wanted to Know about GeoJSON” (Tom MacWright, March 23, 2015), https://macwright.com/2015/03/23/geojson-second-bite.html.
- OpenGeoLabs “Switch from Shapefile,” October 5, 2017, http://switchfromshapefile.org/.
- Spatial Data on the Web Working Group “Spatial Data on the Web Best Practices,” September 28, 2017, https://www.w3.org/TR/sdw-bp/.