Spatial and Geographical data¶
While single geographical locations can be identified with a single pair of coordinates, the geographical extent of trade routes or countries are series of such coordinate values and cannot easily accommodated with the observation-by-variable format of data frames. Instead such geographical data constitutes its own data type, which is discussed in this chapter. The chapter also discusses how such spatial data can be connected with other data about geographical entities, e.g. the population density or GDP per capita of countries. Further it discusses the import of geographical data from shape files and OpenStreetMap OSM files and the definition of and conversion between cartographic projections.
Below is the supporting material for the various sections of the chapter.
