Geocodes

One of the fundamental things about spatial data and mapping is the geographic coordinate system used to uniquely identify locations. We use longitude (x axis, abbreviated lon) and latitude (y axis, abbreviated lat) for locations on our planet. The longitude is the angle from the meridian through Greenwich and the latitude is the angle from the equator. We can use street addresses and locations. Here are a few examples.

geocode("Singapore")

##        lon      lat
## 1 103.8198 1.352083

geocode("11 Bunda Street, Canberra")

##        lon       lat
## 1 149.1319 -35.27705

geocode("Raffles Place", output="more")

##        lon    lat  type          loctype                  address    north
## 1 103.8513 1.2841 route geometric_center raffles place, singapore 1.285651
##      south     east   west         route  neighborhood  locality   country
## 1 1.282702 103.8527 103.85 Raffles Place Downtown Core Singapore Singapore

For later use we will save some of our locations.

cityhall <- as.numeric(geocode("City Hall, Singapore")) %T>% print()

## [1] 103.852460   1.293186

raffles <- as.numeric(geocode("Raffles Place")) %T>% print()

## [1] 103.8513   1.2841

sentosa <- as.numeric(geocode("Sentosa")) %T>% print()

## [1] 103.830321   1.249404