ukgeog

Overview

ukgeog is a simple package to facilitate the easy download of official spatial data sets of the UK. It includes a wide range of geospatial data, provided as simple feature sf objects (like shapefiles but better). Making it easy to make Choropleth Maps with base R, as well as with popular packages such as ggplot2 and leaflet.

Other functions are provided to create UK Local Authority (LA) lookups, across time and between lower and upper tiers.

Installation

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("l-hodge/ukgeog")

Downloading UK boundaries from the ONS

• available_sf returns a list of available boundaries

• select_sf can be used to interactively select a set of boundaries to download

• read_sf can be used to download boundaries for the following geographies using the ‘geog’ and ‘year’ arguments:

‘geog’	Geography	Year
UTLA	Counties and Unitary Authorities	2018; 2019; 2020; 2021
NAT	Countries	2018; 2019; 2020; 2021
EU	European Electoral Regions	2018
LAD	Local Authority Districts	2018; 2019; 2020; 2021
LSOA	Lower Super Output Areas	2001; 2011
MSOA	Middle Super Output Areas	2001; 2011
WAC	National Assembly for Wales Constituencies	2018
WAR	National Assembly for Wales Electoral Regions	2018
NUTS1	NUTS Level 1	2015; 2018
NUTS2	NUTS Level 2	2015; 2018
NUTS3	NUTS Level 3	2015; 2018
OA	Output Area	2001; 2011
GOR	Regions	2018; 2019; 2020; 2021
WM	Westminster Parliamentary Constituencies	2018; 2019; 2020; 2021

Basic Usage

library(ukgeog)

# Read in simple feature of the countries that make up the UK 
sf <- read_sf("NAT", year = 2021)

Creating UK Local Authority lookups (2011-2021)

• across_yr_lookup creates lookups across time to account for boundary changes
• within_yr_lookup creates within year lookups between LAD’s and UTLA’s

Other functions

• convert_lnglat converts Eastings/Northings to Latitude/Longitude

Vignettes

• Creating Choropleth Maps with ukgeog
• Local Authority Boundary Changes
• ONS Hierarchy of UK Statistical Geographies

Credits

Original shapefiles are created by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and are available from the Open Geography Portal.