pacman::p_load(sf, tmap, tidyverse)Hands-on Exercise 8C: Analytical Mapping
1 Overview
This hands-on exercise covers Chapter 23: Analytical Mapping.
In this exercise, I learned:
- Importing geospatial data in rds format into R environment.
- Creating cartographic quality choropleth maps by using appropriate tmap functions.
- Creating rate map
- Creating percentile map
- Creating boxmap
2 Getting Started
2.1 Loading the required packages
For this exercise we will use the following R packages:
sf: for processing geospatial data
tidyverse: data analytics tools for r
tmap: for generating maps
2.2 Importing data
The data set use for this hands-on exercise is called NGA_wp.rds. The data set is a polygon feature data.frame providing information on water point of Nigeria at the LGA level.
NGA_wp <- read_rds("data/rds/NGA_wp.rds")3 Basic Choropleth Mapping
3.1 Visualising distribution of non-functional water point
p1 <- tm_shape(NGA_wp) +
tm_fill("wp_functional",
n = 10,
style = "equal",
palette = "Blues") +
tm_borders(lwd = 0.1,
alpha = 1) +
tm_layout(main.title = "Distribution of functional water point by LGAs",
legend.outside = FALSE)p2 <- tm_shape(NGA_wp) +
tm_fill("total_wp",
n = 10,
style = "equal",
palette = "Blues") +
tm_borders(lwd = 0.1,
alpha = 1) +
tm_layout(main.title = "Distribution of total water point by LGAs",
legend.outside = FALSE)tmap_arrange(p2, p1, nrow = 1)
4 Choropleth Map for Rates
In much of our readings we have now seen the importance to map rates rather than counts of things, and that is for the simple reason that water points are not equally distributed in space. That means that if we do not account for how many water points are somewhere, we end up mapping total water point size rather than our topic of interest.
4.1 Deriving Proportion of Functional Water Points and Non-Functional Water Points
We will tabulate the proportion of functional water points and the proportion of non-functional water points in each LGA.
NGA_wp <- NGA_wp %>%
mutate(pct_functional = wp_functional/total_wp) %>%
mutate(pct_nonfunctional = wp_nonfunctional/total_wp)4.2 Plotting map of rate
tm_shape(NGA_wp) +
tm_fill("pct_functional",
n = 10,
style = "equal",
palette = "Blues",
legend.hist = TRUE) +
tm_borders(lwd = 0.1,
alpha = 1) +
tm_layout(main.title = "Rate map of functional water point by LGAs",
legend.outside = TRUE)
5 Extreme Value Maps
Extreme value maps are variations of common choropleth maps where the classification is designed to highlight extreme values at the lower and upper end of the scale, with the goal of identifying outliers. These maps were developed in the spirit of spatializing EDA, i.e., adding spatial features to commonly used approaches in non-spatial EDA.
5.1 Percentile Map
The percentile map is a special type of quantile map with six specific categories: 0-1%,1-10%, 10-50%,50-90%,90-99%, and 99-100%. The corresponding breakpoints can be derived by means of the base R quantile command, passing an explicit vector of cumulative probabilities as c(0,.01,.1,.5,.9,.99,1). Note that the begin and endpoint need to be included.
5.1.1 Data Preparation
Step 1: Exclude records with NA by using the code chunk below.
NGA_wp <- NGA_wp %>%
drop_na()Step 2: Creating customised classification and extracting values
percent <- c(0,.01,.1,.5,.9,.99,1)
var <- NGA_wp["pct_functional"] %>%
st_set_geometry(NULL)
quantile(var[,1], percent) 0% 1% 10% 50% 90% 99% 100%
0.0000000 0.0000000 0.2169811 0.4791667 0.8611111 1.0000000 1.0000000 5.1.2 Creating the get.var function
We will write an R function as shown below to extract a variable (i.e. wp_nonfunctional) as a vector out of an sf data.frame.
get.var <- function(vname,df) {
v <- df[vname] %>%
st_set_geometry(NULL)
v <- unname(v[,1])
return(v)
}5.1.3 Creating a percentile mapping function
percentmap <- function(vnam, df, legtitle=NA, mtitle="Percentile Map"){
percent <- c(0,.01,.1,.5,.9,.99,1)
var <- get.var(vnam, df)
bperc <- quantile(var, percent)
tm_shape(df) +
tm_polygons() +
tm_shape(df) +
tm_fill(vnam,
title=legtitle,
breaks=bperc,
palette="Blues",
labels=c("< 1%", "1% - 10%", "10% - 50%", "50% - 90%", "90% - 99%", "> 99%")) +
tm_borders() +
tm_layout(main.title = mtitle,
title.position = c("right","bottom"))
}5.1.4 Plotting the map
percentmap("total_wp", NGA_wp)
5.2 Box map
A box map is an augmented quartile map, with an additional lower and upper category. When there are lower outliers, then the starting point for the breaks is the minimum value, and the second break is the lower fence. In contrast, when there are no lower outliers, then the starting point for the breaks will be the lower fence, and the second break is the minimum value (there will be no observations that fall in the interval between the lower fence and the minimum value).
ggplot(data = NGA_wp,
aes(x = "",
y = wp_nonfunctional)) +
geom_boxplot()
5.2.1 Creating boxbreaks function
boxbreaks <- function(v,mult=1.5) {
qv <- unname(quantile(v))
iqr <- qv[4] - qv[2]
upfence <- qv[4] + mult * iqr
lofence <- qv[2] - mult * iqr
# initialize break points vector
bb <- vector(mode="numeric",length=7)
# logic for lower and upper fences
if (lofence < qv[1]) { # no lower outliers
bb[1] <- lofence
bb[2] <- floor(qv[1])
} else {
bb[2] <- lofence
bb[1] <- qv[1]
}
if (upfence > qv[5]) { # no upper outliers
bb[7] <- upfence
bb[6] <- ceiling(qv[5])
} else {
bb[6] <- upfence
bb[7] <- qv[5]
}
bb[3:5] <- qv[2:4]
return(bb)
}5.2.2 Creating the get.var function
get.var <- function(vname,df) {
v <- df[vname] %>% st_set_geometry(NULL)
v <- unname(v[,1])
return(v)
}Let’s test the function
var <- get.var("wp_nonfunctional", NGA_wp)
boxbreaks(var)[1] -56.5 0.0 14.0 34.0 61.0 131.5 278.05.2.3 Boxmap function
boxmap <- function(vnam, df,
legtitle=NA,
mtitle="Box Map",
mult=1.5){
var <- get.var(vnam,df)
bb <- boxbreaks(var)
tm_shape(df) +
tm_polygons() +
tm_shape(df) +
tm_fill(vnam,title=legtitle,
breaks=bb,
palette="Blues",
labels = c("lower outlier",
"< 25%",
"25% - 50%",
"50% - 75%",
"> 75%",
"upper outlier")) +
tm_borders() +
tm_layout(main.title = mtitle,
title.position = c("left",
"top"))
}5.2.4 Plotting the map
tmap_mode("plot")
boxmap("wp_nonfunctional", NGA_wp)
6 Reflections
During ISSS624, I rarely use interactive plots as it was using up a lot for resources. However, doing it the non-interactive way was more tedious as I had to do additional wrangling of the map use in the background (in this case, Singapore map).
However, the interactive map has a lot of features that I like (e.g. synchronized facets) so I’ll try to use it more.