creating road network datasets in R

Question

I have a line shapefile containing roads, and I'd like to use it to create a network dataset. In ArcGIS, I'd do this with the Network Analyst extension (see here).

Is there an R package with the equivalent functionality? I've checked out Bivand's Cran Task View for the analysis of spatial data, and I've searched a bit on SO and the GIS SE, but I haven't found any good leads. I've also looked through Bivand et al.'s (2013) Applied Spatial Data Analysis with R.

I've been using R for a while, but not for spatial data processing and analysis. I'd appreciate any package suggestions or tips about other resources.

Answer 1

You could check the shp2graph package. It allows to input a SpatialLines or SpatialLinesDataFrame (ie. a lines shapefile loaded through the readShapeLines function in the maptools library) to create a network. And then through the function points2network integrate a points data set into an existing network. For example, these points could be the coordinates of city centroids. Then, through the igraph package you could analyze the network.