geocoder

The goal of geocoder is to provide geocoding service for R users.

Installation

To install this package

devtools::install_github("NetZissou/geocoder")

Geocoding

User could use geocoding function to obtain the spatial information from a given address. User may pass in one or multiple address all at once.

The data structure returned from the geocoding function is specified as follows:

address: the address specified by the user
lat: latitude
lng: longitude
county: county name
zip_geocode: zip code from the best-matched geocoding result
status_geocode: TRUE if a valid result is founded, otherwise FALSE
importance: the accuracy score from the nominatim geocoding service
service: nominatim is prioritize and US census API comes second

library(geocoder)

address <- "Robinwood Avenue, Whitehall, Franklin County, Ohio, 43213, United States"
result <- geocoding(address)
result
#> # A tibble: 1 × 9
#>   address   lat   lng city  county zip_geocode status_geocode importance service
#>   <chr>   <dbl> <dbl> <chr> <chr>  <chr>       <lgl>               <dbl> <chr>  
#> 1 Robinw…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… White… 43213       TRUE                 1.03 nomina…
dplyr::glimpse(result)
#> Rows: 1
#> Columns: 9
#> $ address        <chr> "Robinwood Avenue, Whitehall, Franklin County, Ohio, 43…
#> $ lat            <dbl> 39.96893
#> $ lng            <dbl> -82.8964
#> $ city           <chr> "Whitehall"
#> $ county         <chr> "Whitehall"
#> $ zip_geocode    <chr> "43213"
#> $ status_geocode <lgl> TRUE
#> $ importance     <dbl> 1.03
#> $ service        <chr> "nominatim"

address_list <- 
  c(
     "Robinwood Avenue, Whitehall, Franklin County, Ohio, 43213, United States",
     "Hamilton Road, East Hamilton Plaza, Whitehall, Franklin County, Ohio, 43125, United States",
     "Target, 3955, East Broad Street, Whitehall, Franklin County, Ohio, 43213, United States",
     "Josephus Lane, Whitehall, Franklin County, Ohio, 43227, United States",
     "Chandler Drive, Whitehall, Franklin County, Ohio, 43213, United States",
     "Enterprise, East Broad Street, East Broad Plaza Apartments, Whitehall, Franklin County, Ohio, 43004, United States"
  )

geocoding(address_list)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 9
#>   address   lat   lng city  county zip_geocode status_geocode importance service
#>   <chr>   <dbl> <dbl> <chr> <chr>  <chr>       <lgl>               <dbl> <chr>  
#> 1 Robinw…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… White… 43213       TRUE                 1.03 nomina…
#> 2 Hamilt…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… White… 43125       TRUE                 1.33 nomina…
#> 3 Target…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… White… 43213       TRUE                 1.25 nomina…
#> 4 Joseph…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… White… 43227       TRUE                 1.03 nomina…
#> 5 Chandl…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… White… 43213       TRUE                 1.03 nomina…
#> 6 Enterp…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… White… 43004       TRUE                 1.54 nomina…

To specify the service to use, user could use geocoding_nominatim or geocoding_census.

# Use US Census API
geocoding_census(address = address)
#> # A tibble: 1 × 9
#>   address   lat   lng city  county zip_geocode status_geocode importance service
#>   <chr>   <dbl> <dbl> <chr> <chr>  <chr>       <lgl>               <dbl> <chr>  
#> 1 Robinw…    NA    NA <NA>  <NA>   <NA>        FALSE                  NA US Cen…

# Use Nominatim
geocoding_nominatim(address = address, threshold = 0.5)
#> # A tibble: 1 × 9
#>   address   lat   lng city  county zip_geocode status_geocode importance service
#>   <chr>   <dbl> <dbl> <chr> <chr>  <chr>       <lgl>               <dbl> <chr>  
#> 1 Robinw…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… Frank… 43213       TRUE                 1.03 nomina…

Note that these two functios only works for single address input. To geocode multiple addresses with specified service, wrap the function with a for-loop or use the map family functions.

purrr::map_dfr(
  .x = address_list,
  .f = geocoding_nominatim
)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 9
#>   address   lat   lng city  county zip_geocode status_geocode importance service
#>   <chr>   <dbl> <dbl> <chr> <chr>  <chr>       <lgl>               <dbl> <chr>  
#> 1 Robinw…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… Frank… 43213       TRUE                 1.03 nomina…
#> 2 Hamilt…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… Frank… 43125       TRUE                 1.33 nomina…
#> 3 Target…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… Frank… 43213       TRUE                 1.25 nomina…
#> 4 Joseph…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… Frank… 43227       TRUE                 1.03 nomina…
#> 5 Chandl…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… Frank… 43213       TRUE                 1.03 nomina…
#> 6 Enterp…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… Frank… 43004       TRUE                 1.54 nomina…

Reverse Geocoding

Sometimes only lat and lng is provided but you would like to have other spatial information such as zipcode, county, city and etc. You could use geocoding_nominatim_reverse to reverse geocoding.

geocoding_nominatim_reverse(
  lat = 39.96893,
  lng = -82.8964
)
#> # A tibble: 1 × 9
#>   address   lat   lng city  county zip_geocode status_geocode importance service
#>   <chr>   <dbl> <dbl> <chr> <chr>  <chr>       <lgl>               <dbl> <chr>  
#> 1 Robinw…  40.0 -82.9 Whit… Frank… 43213       TRUE                    1 nomina…

Geocoding with Spatial Shapefiles

geocoding_sf is designed when you have a shapefile that contains serveral spatial regions and you wold like to know which region your data falls into.

geocoding_sf(
  lat = lat,
  lng = lng,
  sf = sf,     # spatial object
  id = "name", # the identifier column of the sf object
  parallel = FALSE # parallel execution
)