tmap is an actively maintained open-source R-library for drawing thematic maps. The API is based on A Layered Grammar of Graphics and resembles the syntax of ggplot2, a popular R-library for drawing charts.
See below the source code for these images.
Installation
tmap is available on . Installation is straightforward:
install.packages("tmap")For Linux and macOS users who are new to working with spatial data in R, this may fail since additional (non-R) libraries are required (which are automatically installed for Windows users).
Windows No additional installation required.
Linux (Ubuntu) See https://r-spatial.github.io/sf/#linux
macOS See https://r-spatial.github.io/sf/#macos
Development (major update!)
We are working on a major update (version 4). The development of the current CRAN release (3.3) has been stopped, but if there are critical bugs, let us know. Version 4 will be submitted to CRAN this year, when it is mature enough and when it is backwards compatible with version 3.
Are you curious about version 4? You can install the development version as follows:
Documentation is available, and is a work in progress. Examples are also available at tmap v4: a sneak peek (this is a good place to start, although is slightly outdated) and more up to date examples in Geocomputation with R.
Hint: if you want to try out version 4, but don’t want to risk breaking your installation of version 3, try it in posit.cloud.
Any feedback, requests, tips, or bug reports are welcome!
Book
Tennekes, M., Nowosad, J., Elegant and informative maps with tmap. Draft version, https://r-tmap.github.io/
Reference
Tennekes, M., 2018, tmap: Thematic Maps in R, Journal of Statistical Software, 84(6), 1-39
This paper has been written for tmap 1.11-2. See the reproducible code using tmap 2.x and 3.x. When version 4 is published on CRAN, we will publish the book, which will then be the official reference for tmap.
Presentations
- Creating thematic maps in R (OpenGeoHUB Summer School 2019)
- Plotting spatial data with R (eRum 2018)
- Exploring and presenting maps with tmap (useR!2017)
- tmap: creating thematic maps in a flexible way (useR!2015)]
Other resources
- Geocomputation with R; Making maps with R, Robin Lovelace, Jakub Nowosad, Jannes Muenchow
- R tip: Create maps in R
- Working with Spatial Data and using tmap, Samantha A. Alger
- Computer World: Mapping in R just got a whole lot easier
- National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center: Maps in R
- Introduction to visualising spatial data in R
- Blog post StatialControl
- Blog post TWIAV
- Computer World: Create maps in R in 10 (fairly) easy steps
- Computer World: Great R packages for data import, wrangling and visualization
- Tutorial Visualising spatial data: from base to shiny - workshop
- Stack Overflow questions (#tmap)
Getting help
There are two main places to get help with tmap:
- stackoverflow is a great source of answers to common tmap questions. It is also a great place to get help, once you have created a reproducible example that illustrates your problem. Please tag your questions with tmap.
- If you have a request or if think your problem is caused by a bug, please open an issue, preferably with a reproducible example.