Working with geospatial vector data in R

Virtual workshop on Zoom

March 2, 2023  -  from 9:00 am to 12:30 pm

Trainer

Dr. Tim Elrick is the Director of the Geographic Information Centre (GIC) at McGill University

Objectives

This workshop will introduce participants to functions and packages that allow them to import, manipulate and display geospatial vector data. Mainly based on the sf and tmap package, the participants learn to apply introductory Geographic Information Science (GIScience) methods in R. They will learn how to import data of different file types (e.g. shapefiles, geojson), tap into open data APIs like OpenStreetMap, the General Bike Feed Specification (e.g. Bixi bikes) or scraped data like AirBnB listings. Participants will learn how to merge and intersect geospatial objects, create buffers, spatially join data sets and calculate nearest neighbours. They will also learn how to create appealing maps in R with the tmap and ggplot2 package.

This workshop will allow participants to answer quantitative questions about geographic areas for which data in defined boundaries exist, e.g. census tracts, municipalities or provinces. It also allows them to work with data that have a geographic reference (e.g. business addresses, locations with latitude/longitude, …).

Registration fees

  50$  -  Student and postdoctoral fellow
100$  -  Staff from a QICSS member university*
150$  -  Any other category

Registration fees must be paid by credit card. Federal and Provincial taxes are not included.

Registration

A minimum of 10 participants is required to run the workshop (maximum 15). Registered participants will be refunded if the minimum enrolment is not met.

Notes

* QICSS’ member institutions: Université de Montréal, McGill University, Concordia University, UQAM, INRS-UCS, Université de Sherbrooke, Université Laval, Université du Québec and HEC Montréal.