Dear All, Has anyone worked with linking R to both ArcView and MapInfo GIS systems? My desire is to capture object selection from GIS and pass to R and to return spatially based statistical model results from R to GIS. If both could simultaneously access the same data file this would be a bonus. My inclination is to put together some routines based on ODBC linking but thought I would seek like minded people before pressing too far into the evaluation. Any thoughts or suggested alternative directions or shared examination would be welcome. SimonG **************************************************************************** ***************************** Simon Gatehouse Phone: 61 (2) 9490 8677 Geochemist Mobile:61 0407 130 635 CSIRO Exploration & Mining Fax: 61 (2) 9490 8921 Address: CSIRO Division of Exploration and Mining, Newbigin Close off Julius Ave North Ryde, NSW 2113 Mail: CSIRO Division of Exploration and Mining, P.O. Box 136 North Ryde, NSW 1670 Australia E-mail: simon.gatehouse at dem.csiro.au Web Page: http://www.csiro.au/ -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Linking R to GIS
2 messages · Gatehouse, Simon (DEM, North Ryde), Roger Bivand
On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Gatehouse, Simon (DEM, North Ryde) wrote:
Dear All, Has anyone worked with linking R to both ArcView and MapInfo GIS systems? My desire is to capture object selection from GIS and pass to R and to return spatially based statistical model results from R to GIS. If both could simultaneously access the same data file this would be a bonus. My inclination is to put together some routines based on ODBC linking but thought I would seek like minded people before pressing too far into the evaluation. Any thoughts or suggested alternative directions or shared examination would be welcome.
One general comment and a couple of suggestions. Both ArcView and MapInfo treat the geometry of spatial objects in a simplifying way, not handling topology in the thorough way that heavy-duty GIS - like Arc-Info - do. While most scientists are afforded access to desk-top style GIS such as these, there are valid issues to be addressed about the need for topology in interfacing (not least unambiguity in choice of spatial objects). The S map.builder (http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/general/map.builder) does construct the topology, GRASS does too, both for legacy vector and the forthcoming 5.1 beta vector revision. Not forgetting that, your idea of doing the selection in the GIS and getting R to interface the attribute table (ie. doing aspatial analysis on the attributes in R) via ODBC is potentially viable. It might be feasible to prototype it using the connections interface family now in R-base - see the R Data Import/Export manual. Even writing a *.csv file might do - or maybe the DCOM package under contrib/extra/dcom at CRAN. However, this just gets the attribute data into R and back again. I'm sure there are plenty of people with similar problems who would be interested in how you progress. Roger
Roger Bivand Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Breiviksveien 40, N-5045 Bergen, Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 93 93 e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no and: Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Gdansk, al. Mar. J. Pilsudskiego 46, PL-81 378 Gdynia, Poland. -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._