:Author: OSGeo-Live
:Reviewer: Cameron Shorter, LISAsoft
:Version: osgeo-live8.5
:License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

.. image:: ../../images/project_logos/logo-R.png
  :alt: project logo
  :align: right
  :target: http://cran.r-project.org

R for Spatial Data
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Statistical Programming
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

R is a powerful, widely used software environment for statistical
computing and graphics which excels at analyzing and processing
geographic data sets. Geospatial analysis capabilities within R are
available in R packages (modules that extend the capabilities of R)
that provide access to a large number of traditional and state of the
art algorithms, often before they are available in other open source
or proprietary software. R and its packages are able to process point,
line, polygon and grid data. Users can accomplish a broad array of
tasks such as: image classification, statistical analysis to infer
spatial relationships and patterns of features, and others listed in
the core features below. The functions available via R complement and
advance capabilities found in GIS and image processing software.

The core R interface is a command line window which provides excellent
flexibility and control but tends to lengthen the time required to
become a proficient user when compared to software with a graphical
user interface (GUI). Fortunately R is well documented on the web site
which eases the learning process. Scripts are often used to automate
processing steps but there are GUIs, the leading one being 
RStudio (http://www.rstudio.com).


R is an implementation of the S programming language and there is
significant compatibility between R and legacy S and S-Plus code as
well as between R and the modern commercial version of S, TIBCO
Spotfire S+. This makes it possible to convert different
versions of S code to run on R without major code modifications.

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  :alt: project logo
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Core Features
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* Complete Object Oriented Programming Language designed for Statistics and similar Mathematical intensive applications
* Hundreds of community contributed add-on packages for spatial statistics
* Classes for spatial data
* Handling spatial data
* Reading and writing spatial data
* Point pattern analysis
* Geostatistics
* Disease mapping and areal data analysis
* Spatial regression
* Ecological analysis
* Powerful raster processing algorithms

Details
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**Website:** http://cran.r-project.org

**Licence:** GPL

**Software Version:** 3.1.2

**Supported Platforms:** Windows, Linux, Mac, Unix

**Community Support:** http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Spatial.html


Quickstart
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* :doc:`Quickstart documentation <../quickstart/R_quickstart>`