European Union NUTS2, NUTS3 regions (SHP format)

2010/8/27 Tomas Zelinsky <tomas.zelinsky at tuke.sk>:

Hello,

you probably know administrative maps of the EU and their availability (both
SHP and GDB) via
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/gisco/popups/references/administrative_units_statistical_units_1
.

Basically there are three administrative levels in one map (NUTS 1, 2 and 3
levels).

1. Is there any possibility how to make NUTS3 level borderlines invisible if
my aim is to e.g. analyze NUTS2 level?

2. Or is it possible to make e.g. NUTS1 level borderlines thicker than the
other?

Looking at NUTS_RG_60M_2006.SHP there's a STAT_LEVL_ variable which I
guess is the NUTS level code - this is probably documented in the
meta-data somewhere. So you can do:

 require(rgdal)
 s = readOGR(".","NUTS_RG_60M_2006")
 plot(s[s$STAT_LEVL_==0,])
 plot(s[s$STAT_LEVL_==1,])

 and so on. You might also want to extract just the polygons for a
particular level into a new object:

 n2 = s[s$STAT_LEVL_==2,]

 You can use lwd=X in plot for sp objects to change the line width.

Barry