cshapes-package {cshapes}R Documentation

CShapes Dataset and Utilities

Description

R Package for CShapes, a GIS dataset of country boundaries (1946-2008). Includes functions for data extraction and the computation of weights matrices.

Details

The cshapes package facilitates the use of CShapes from R. CShapes is a GIS dataset of historical country boundaries (1946-2008) and compatible with two country lists (Gleditsch and Ward 1999 and Correlates of War, see references below). In particular, the package enables access to the dataset directly, as well as distance computations on country polygons for specific points in time. Access to the dataset from within R is done using the cshp function. The distmatrix function can be used to compute minimum-, capital- and centroid distances between countries. See the examples given in the documentation of the functions in this package. The main cshapes website is located at http://nils.weidmann.ws/projects/cshapes and contains additional documentation and examples for the dataset and the R package.

Implementation: The distance matrix computation is implemented in Java using the JAMA, JTS and JUMP libraries, using the rJava package to invoke the computation from R. Warning: If the Java process receives an interrupt from outside R, this will cause R to abort.

Author(s)

Nils B. Weidmann <nils.weidmann@gmail.com>, Doreen Kuse <doreen.kuse@gmail.com>, Kristian S. Gleditsch <ksg@essex.ac.uk>

Maintainer: Nils B. Weidmann <nils.weidmann@gmail.com>, Kristian S. Gleditsch <ksg@essex.ac.uk>

References

Correlates of War Project. 2008. "State System Membership List, v2008.1." Online, http://correlatesofwar.org.

Gleditsch, Kristian S. & Michael D. Ward. 1999. "Interstate System Membership: A Revised List of the Independent States since 1816." International Interactions 25: 393-413. Online, http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ksg/statelist.html.

Java Matrix Package JAMA, v. 1.0.2 (http://math.nist.gov/javanumerics/jama/)

Java Topology Suite JTS, v. 1.7.2 (http://www.vividsolutions.com/jts/jtshome.htm). License: GPL

Java Unified Mapping Platform JUMP, v. 1.2 (http://www.vividsolutions.com/jump/). License: GPL


[Package cshapes version 0.2-2 Index]