Client for 'mapshaper' for 'Geospatial' Operations.
rmapshaper
An R package providing access to the awesome mapshaper tool by Matthew Bloch, which has both a Node.js command-line tool as well as an interactive web tool.
I started this package so that I could use mapshaper’s Visvalingam simplification method in R. There is, as far as I know, no other R package that performs topologically-aware multi-polygon simplification. (This means that shared boundaries between adjacent polygons are always kept intact, with no gaps or overlaps, even at high levels of simplification).
But mapshaper does much more than simplification, so I am working on wrapping most of the core functionality of mapshaper into R functions.
So far, rmapshaper
provides the following functions:
ms_simplify
- simplify polygons or linesms_clip
- clip an area out of a layer using a polygon layer or a bounding box. Works on polygons, lines, and pointsms_erase
- erase an area from a layer using a polygon layer or a bounding box. Works on polygons, lines, and pointsms_dissolve
- aggregate polygon features, optionally specifying a field to aggregate on. If no field is specified, will merge all polygons into one.ms_explode
- convert multipart shapes to single part. Works with polygons, lines, and points in geojson format, but currently only with polygons and lines in theSpatial
classes (notSpatialMultiPoints
andSpatialMultiPointsDataFrame
).ms_lines
- convert polygons to topological boundaries (lines)ms_innerlines
- convert polygons to shared inner boundaries (lines)ms_points
- create points from a polygon layerms_filter_fields
- Remove fields from the attributesms_filter_islands
- Remove small detached polygons
If you run into any bugs or have any feature requests, please file an issue
Installation
rmapshaper
is on CRAN. Install the current version with:
install.packages("rmapshaper")
You can install the development version from github with remotes
:
## install.packages("remotes")
library(remotes)
install_github("ateucher/rmapshaper")
Usage
rmapshaper works with sf
objects as well as geojson strings (character objects of class geo_json
). It also works with Spatial
classes from the sp
package, though this will likely be retired in the future; users are encouraged to use the more modern sf
package.
We will use the nc.gpkg
file (North Carolina county boundaries) from the sf
package and read it in as an sf
object:
library(rmapshaper)
library(sf)
#> Linking to GEOS 3.11.0, GDAL 3.5.3, PROJ 9.1.0; sf_use_s2() is TRUE
file <- system.file("gpkg/nc.gpkg", package = "sf")
nc_sf <- read_sf(file)
Plot the original:
plot(nc_sf["FIPS"])
Now simplify using default parameters, then plot the simplified North Carolina counties:
nc_simp <- ms_simplify(nc_sf)
plot(nc_simp["FIPS"])
You can see that even at very high levels of simplification, the mapshaper simplification algorithm preserves the topology, including shared boundaries. The keep
parameter specifies what proportion of vertices to keep:
nc_very_simp <- ms_simplify(nc_sf, keep = 0.001)
plot(nc_very_simp["FIPS"])
Compare this to the output using sf::st_simplify
, where overlaps and gaps are evident:
nc_stsimp <- st_simplify(nc_sf, preserveTopology = TRUE, dTolerance = 10000) # dTolerance specified in meters
plot(nc_stsimp["FIPS"])
This time we’ll demonstrate the ms_innerlines
function:
nc_sf_innerlines <- ms_innerlines(nc_sf)
plot(nc_sf_innerlines)
All of the functions are quite fast with geojson
character objects. They are slower with the sf
and Spatial
classes due to internal conversion to/from json. If you are going to do multiple operations on large sf
objects, it’s recommended to first convert to json using geojsonsf::sf_geojson()
, or geojsonio::geojson_json()
. All of the functions have the input object as the first argument, and return the same class of object as the input. As such, they can be chained together. For a totally contrived example, using nc_sf
as created above:
library(geojsonsf)
library(rmapshaper)
library(sf)
## First convert 'states' dataframe from geojsonsf pkg to json
nc_sf %>%
sf_geojson() |>
ms_erase(bbox = c(-80, 35, -79, 35.5)) |> # Cut a big hole in the middle
ms_dissolve() |> # Dissolve county borders
ms_simplify(keep_shapes = TRUE, explode = TRUE) |> # Simplify polygon
geojson_sf() |> # Convert to sf object
plot(col = "blue") # plot
Using the system mapshaper
Sometimes if you are dealing with a very large spatial object in R, rmapshaper
functions will take a very long time or not work at all. As of version 0.4.0
, you can make use of the system mapshaper
library if you have it installed. This will allow you to work with very large spatial objects.
First make sure you have mapshaper installed:
check_sys_mapshaper()
#> mapshaper version 0.6.25 is installed and on your PATH
#> mapshaper-xl
#> "/opt/homebrew/bin/mapshaper-xl"
If you get an error, you will need to install mapshaper. First install node (https://nodejs.org/en) and then install mapshaper in a command prompt with:
$ npm install -g mapshaper
Then you can use the sys
argument in any rmapshaper function:
nc_simp_internal <- ms_simplify(nc_sf)
nc_simp_sys <- ms_simplify(nc_sf, sys = TRUE, sys_mem=8) #sys_mem specifies the amount of memory to use in Gb. It defaults to 8 if omitted.
par(mfrow = c(1,2))
plot(st_geometry(nc_simp_internal), main = "internal")
plot(st_geometry(nc_simp_sys), main = "system")
Thanks
This package uses the V8 package to provide an environment in which to run mapshaper’s javascript code in R. It relies heavily on all of the great spatial packages that already exist (especially sf
), and the geojsonio
and the geojsonsf
packages for converting between geojson
, sf
and Spatial
object.
Thanks to timelyportfolio for helping me wrangle the javascript to the point where it works in V8. He also wrote the mapshaper htmlwidget, which provides access to the mapshaper web interface, right in your R session. We have plans to combine the two in the future.
Code of Conduct
Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.
LICENSE
MIT.