Crime Mapping and Spatial Data Analysis using R

Throughout this book we provide example datasets and geometry files taken from various sources. Some, we get from data released with research papers, such as the NCOVR dataset on homicides in U.S. Counties. Some are administrative data, such as open crime data, which are linked with geometries from similarly available data provided on government or other institutional websites. In some cases we use APIs, for example to get data from Open Street Map, or from the Transport for London API, and in other cases we make use of resources made available for R such as the R package rnaturalearth which makes available boundaries from the natural earth project through installing the package.

As the kind of data, attribute and geometry, will vary between each reader of this book, and even for the same reader in different times, we cannot offer a definitive guide to sourcing the appropriate spatial data for your specific needs. However, we will instead show some examples of how we sourced our spatial data, in hopes that it might inspire and be useful to you in your mapping adventures.

Specifically, we will highlight the following useful resources for getting UK boundary data: