index.Rmd

---
title: "All things R Spatial"
subtitle: "An introduction to spatial R for ArcGIS users"
author: "Nils Ratnaweera and Nikolaos Bakogiannis"
date: "Version from: `r format(Sys.time(), '%d %B, %Y')`"
site: bookdown::bookdown_site
bibliography:
  - bibliography/general.bib
  - bibliography/packages.bib
nocite: '@*'
url: https://arc2r.github.io/book/
github-repo: https://github.com/arc2r/book
cover-image: images/logo.png
---


```{r,echo=FALSE,message=FALSE,warning=FALSE}
now <- Sys.time()
tz <- Sys.timezone()
```


```{r,echo=FALSE,message=FALSE,warning=FALSE, out.width="50%", fig.align="center"}
knitr::include_graphics('images/logo.svg')
```


[![Actions Status](https://github.com/arc2r/book/workflows/bookdown/badge.svg)](https://github.com/arc2r/book/actions)



# Welcome!

## What this book is about

This is a resource for people wanting to learn spatial-R (Analysis, Visualization) in R and are coming with a background in ArcGIS. This resource should provide some help on this journey. To make use of this ressource, we assume two things: (1) that you have some prior experience with `R` and (2) that you have experience with Geodata and GIS-Concepts. 

This book leans heavily on how the Toolboxes and Toolsets are organized in ArcGIS Pro. The idea is that you can look up specific things of which you only know the ArcGIS terminology for. This book is a work in progress, and *we highly appreciate contributions* to this book: If you have anything to add, please [file an issue or make a pull request](https://github.com/arc2r/book).  

We are big fans of using `magrittr`'s pipe function `%>%` and heavily use it throughout this book. In addition for vector data, we use packages from the `tidyverse` (especially from the `dplyr` package: `filter()`, `mutate()` and `summarise()`).

## How it started

We had long since thought about the necessity of a resource which helps ArcGIS users transition to R or Python. Nils had tweeted about this (see below) without getting much reception, and one point just decided to start his own resource. Since [our research group](gis.lsfm.zhaw.ch/) teaches an introduction to GIS and an advanced GIS course mostly based on ArcGIS, we decided to pick up where Nils had started and develop the resource with internal funding of our University. 




```{r,echo=FALSE, fig.cap="[Nils' Tweet](https://twitter.com/NRatnaweera/status/1187759876472213504) might not have received much attention, but it did spark a conversation within our group", out.width="60%", fig.align="center", purl=FALSE}
knitr::include_graphics("images/tweet1.jpg")
```


<!-- ## Why you should transition anyway -->

<!-- We strongly advocate the use of a programming language to tackle GIS tasks for the following reasons: -->

<!--
 todo translate this
  add specific advantages of using FOSS?
  Ich Programmieren, weil ich damit:
  1. … repetitive Tasks automatisieren kann
  2. … übertragbare «Tools» bauen kann
  3. … mehr Flexibilität und «Power» habe
  4. … zu Grunde liegende Funktionen besser verstehe
  5. … bessere Möglichkeiten habe zu Kollaborieren
  6. … bessere Möglichkeiten habe, Hilfe zu erhalten
  7.… reproduzierbar arbeite
-->