Updated world map for R "maps" package?

geospatial, maps, r

Solution

Try `wrld_simpl` in the `maptools` package.

require(maptools)
data(wrld_simpl)
plot(wrld_simpl)

## or subset based on the name
plot(wrld_simpl[wrld_simpl$NAME == "Russia", ])
## explore other attributes
summary(wrld_simpl)

I don't know how up to date it is, but `?wrld_simpl` describes the source so you might find good stuff following links. Other packages that rely on `sp` will also be worth exploring for data.

Otherwise, there was the Rgshhs package, though I'm not sure that's still available. It came with fair detail but you can download more if you need it. It's a bit complicated, the original data is here: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/gshhs.html

You can also read in data from vector formats (like MIF or SHP or PostGIS) using `rgdal` if you have your own data, or similar read functions in `maptools` for shapefile only.

Example to query the objects using points:

require(sp)
require(maptools)
data(wrld_simpl)
pts <- SpatialPoints(cbind(c(29.392089,147), c(53.592505, -35)), CRS(proj4string(wrld_simpl)))

over(pts, wrld_simpl)$NAME

For an introduction to these and other functions in `sp` see vignette("sp").

Also try the `geonames` package for more general querying of geographic names.

Problem

``` library(maps) 1> map.where(database="world",29.392089,53.592505) [1] "USSR" ``` does anyone know how I can get an updated world map database to drive this function in the maps package? I need country names only for now, not detailed sub-national administrative information such as is available in at gadm.org.

Original source