ABSTRACT
This chapter requires the following packages: library(sf) library(raster) library(dplyr) library(spData). It is about reading and writing geographic data. Geographic data import is essential for geocomputation: real-world applications are impossible without data. Geographic data I/O is almost always part of a wider process. It depends on knowing which datasets are available, where they can be found and how to retrieve them. To further ease data access, a number of packages for downloading geographic data have been developed. There are many geographic file formats, each of which has pros and cons. A vast and ever-increasing amount of geographic data is available on the internet, much of which is free to access and use. In some ways there is now too much data, in the sense that there are often multiple places to access the same dataset. Exploring datasets interactively on a browser is an effective way of understanding available layers.
