Introduction to Spatial Data
Content for Monday, August 28, 2023
Now that you have a little more background in the breadth of philosophies, methods, and questions that geography encompasses, it’s time to start familiarizing yourself with the nature of spatial data. This lecture will be a little more conceptual, but is designed to help you make some sense for how R thinks about spatial data (or at least how the package developers have been thinking about it).
Readings
Types of Spatial Data from Paula Moraga’s new book Spatial Statistics for Data Science: Theory and Practice with R provides a nice overview of the types of spatial data from the perspective of a statistical analyst.
Attributes and Support from Pebesma and Bivand’s Spatial Data Science with Applications in R gives more info and examples on the nature of the relationship between geometries and support.
Scale and Projections from Mapping, Society, and Technology by Laura Matson and Melinda Kernik gives a nice overview of the challenges associated with representing location on Earth’s surface.
Objectives
By the end of today you should be able to:
Contrast the different “views” of spatial data and their incorporation in GIS.
Identify key elements that make data “spatial”.
Articulate the importance of coordinate reference systems.
Recognize the relationship between geometries and support.
Slides
The slides for today’s lesson are available online as an HTML file. Use the buttons below to open the slides either as an interactive website or as a static PDF (for printing or storing for later). You can also click in the slides below and navigate through them with your left and right arrow keys.