Mapping and Measuring Country Shapes

The article introduces the cshapes R package, which includes our CShapes dataset of contemporary and historical country boundaries, as well as computational tools for computing geographical measures from these maps. We provide an overview of the need for considering spatial dependence in comparative research, how this requires appropriate historical maps, and detail how the cshapes associated R package cshapes can contribute to these ends. We illustrate the use of the package for drawing maps, computing spatial variables for countries, and generating weights matrices for spatial statistics.

Nils B. Weidmann , Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
2010-6-01

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Citation

For attribution, please cite this work as

Weidmann & Gleditsch, "Mapping and Measuring Country Shapes", The R Journal, 2010

BibTeX citation

@article{RJ-2010-004,
  author = {Weidmann, Nils B. and Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede},
  title = {Mapping and Measuring Country Shapes},
  journal = {The R Journal},
  year = {2010},
  note = {https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2010-004},
  doi = {10.32614/RJ-2010-004},
  volume = {2},
  issue = {1},
  issn = {2073-4859},
  pages = {18-24}
}