RCzechia

This project downloads a set of shapefiles relevant to the Czech Republic. It was inspired by the popular tigris package for US datasets.

For examples of RCzechia in action please see the package vignette:

• Visualizing Czech Population
• Geocoding Locations & Drawing them on a Map
• Unemployment in the Czech Republic - a Chloropleth
• Distance Between Prague and Brno
• Geographical Center of the City of Brno
• Interactive Map
• Dissolving sf Polygons
• KFME Grid Cells - faunistické čtverce
• Terrain of the Czech Republic

The administrative area polygons (except for city parts) are based on the RÚIAN register; the natural objects (and city parts) are based on ArcČR 500 (https://www.arcdata.cz/produkty/geograficka-data/arccr-500) with some adjustments:

• the encoding was adjusted to handle Czech accents correctly in R
  
• coordinate reference system was changed from a local CRS (S-JSTK) to global WGS84 (EPSG:4326)

The shapefiles are by necessity larger than the limits of a CRAN package size allow. The data are therefore stored remotely (on Amazon AWS) and downloaded as required. Working internet connection is therefore required to fully use the package.

For the most commonly used shapes (republika, kraje and okresy) an optional low resolution version is also included. To access it specify the value of resolution parameter as "low" (default is "high").

Using of the lo-res versions does not require a working internet connection.

Access to the external files is logged, from time to time I check the logs (mainly to understand my bandwidth charges).

A note to Czech users

Tohle je “oficiální”, a tedy anglické, readme. Českou verzi naleznete na http://www.jla-data.net/cze/package-rczechia/

Installation

The package is on CRAN (as of March 2018) so to get a stable version simply run:

install.packages("RCzechia")

You can also get the latest development version by running remotes::install_github("jlacko/RCzechia") and the last version built on sp instead of sf package by running remotes::install_github("jlacko/RCzechia", ref = "v0.1.4").

The following spatial objects are included:

• republika: borders of the Czech Republic
• kraje: 14 regions of the Czech Republic + Prague.
  Key is KOD_CZNUTS3 (CZ NUTS3 code).
• okresy: 76 districts (LAU1 areas) of the Czech Republic + Prague (legally not a district but the capital).
  Key is KOD_LAU1 (CZ LAU1 code).
• orp_polygony 205 municipalities with extended powers (in Czech: obce s rozšířenou působností) + Prague (legally not a city but the capital).
  Key is KOD_ORP.
• obce_polygony: 6.258 municipalities of the Czech Republic.
  Key is KOD_OBEC, also contained are KOD_ORP (code of municipality with extended powers; see above) and KOD_POV (kód pověřené obce)
• obce_body the same as obce_polygony, but centroids instead of polygons.
  Key is again KOD_OBEC.
• casti: primarily 57 city parts of Prague, but also of other cities with defined parts (Brno, Ostrava..).
  Key is KOD.
• reky: streams and rivers
• plochy: stillwaters (lakes and ponds).
• silnice: roads (highways, speedways etc.)
• zeleznice: railroads
• chr_uzemi: protected natural areas (Chráněná území)
• lesy: woodland areas (more than 30 ha in area)
• KFME_grid: KFME grid cells (faunistické čtverce)
• vyskopis: terrain of the Czech republic as a {raster} package object

All objects are implemented as functions returning data frames, so must be followed by brackets (i.e. hranice <- republika()).

In addition a number of utility functions is provided:

• union_sf: dissolves sf polygons according to a key value
• geocode: interfaces to geocoding API of ČÚZK.
• revgeo: interfaces to reverse geocoding API of ČÚZK.