Setup for GIS

Last updated on 2025-07-01 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

How do I get ready for working with geospatial data in R?

Objectives

Get your R-environment prepared for working with geospatial data

This workshop is designed to be run on your local machine. First, you will need to download the data we use in the workshop. Then, you need to set up your machine to analyse and process geospatial data. We provide instructions below to install all components manually.

Data

For a full description of the data used in this workshop see the data page.

Note that the page includes a lot of other datasets, not just GIS-related.

Local Installation

Software

Software	Install	Manual	Available for	Description
R	Link	Link	Linux, MacOS	Software environment for statistical and scientific computing
RStudio	Link		Linux, MacOS	GUI for R

We provide quick instructions below for installing the various software needed for this workshop. At points, they assume familiarity with the command line and with installation in general. As there are different operating systems and many different versions of operating systems and environments, these may not work on your computer. If an installation doesn’t work for you, please refer to the installation instructions for that software listed in the table above.

To install the geospatial libraries, install the latest version RTools

The simplest way to install these geospatial libraries is to install the latest version of Kyng Chaos’s pre-built package for GDAL Complete. Be aware that several other libraries are also installed, including the UnixImageIO, SQLite3, and NumPy.

After downloading the package in the link above, you will need to double-click the cardbord box icon to complete the installation. Depending on your security settings, you may get an error message about “unidentified developers”. You can enable the installation by following these instructions for installing programs from unidentified developers.

Alternatively, participants who are comfortable with the command line can install the geospatial libraries individually using homebrew:

BASH

$ brew install proj
$ brew install geos
$ brew install gdal

Steps for installing the geospatial libraries will vary based on which form of Linux you are using. These instructions are adapted from the sf package’s README.

For Ubuntu:

BASH

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install libgdal-dev libgeos-dev libproj-dev

For Fedora:

BASH

$ sudo dnf install gdal-devel proj-devel geos-devel

For Arch:

BASH

$ pacman -S gdal proj geos

For Debian: The rocker geospatial Dockerfiles may be helpful. Ubuntu Dockerfiles are found here. These may be helpful to get an idea of the commands needed to install the necessary dependencies.

UDUNITS

Linux users will have to install UDUNITS separately. Like the geospatial libraries discussed above, this is a dependency for the R package sf. Due to conflicts, it does not install properly on Linux machines when installed as part of the sf installation process. It is therefore necessary to install it using the command line ahead of time.

Linux

Steps for installing the geospatial will vary based on which form of Linux you are using. These instructions are adapted from the sf package’s README.

For Ubuntu:

BASH

$ sudo apt-get install libudunits2-dev

For Fedora:

BASH

$ sudo dnf install udunits2-devel

For Arch:

BASH

$ pacaur/yaourt/whatever -S udunits

For Debian:

BASH

$ sudo apt-get install -y libudunits2-dev

R Packages

The following R packages are used in the various geospatial lessons. If you have taken other of our cources, you probably have a number of them installed already.

To install these packages in RStudio, copy the following into the console and hit enter.

R

install.packages(c("dplyr", "ggplot2", "raster", "rasterVis", "RColorBrewer", "remotes", "reshape", "scales", "sf", , "tidyr", "maps"))

You should see a status message starting with: terra skal nok også være der et sted. men det fejler i git-actions.

OUTPUT

trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/macosx/el-capitan/contrib/3.5/dplyr_0.7.6.tgz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 5686536 bytes (5.4 MB)
==================================================
downloaded 5.4 MB

trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/macosx/el-capitan/contrib/3.5/ggplot2_3.0.0.tgz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 3577658 bytes (3.4 MB)
==================================================
downloaded 3.4 MB

When the installation is complete, you will see a status message like:

OUTPUT

The downloaded binary packages are in
/var/folders/7g/r8_n81y534z0vy5hxc6dx1t00000gn/T//RtmpJECKXM/downloaded_packages

You are now ready for the workshop!

Key Points

Working with geospatial data requires additional software