ptaconet / getremotedata

R functions to download & import efficiently various spatio-temporal data

getremotedata

getremotedata is an R package that provides functions to harmonize the download of various open data collections available on the web.

Installation

The package can be installed with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("ptaconet/getremotedata", build_vignettes = T, build_manual = T)

Collections available in getremotedata

Currently getremotedata supports download of 5 data collections. Most data collections provided through getremotedata have a spatial and a temporal component and a global coverage. Details of each product available for download are provided in the table above or through the function grd_list_collections(). Want more details on a specific collection ? Click on the “DOI” column !

Data collections available for download with getremotedata (click to expand)

Collection	Name	Source	Nature	DOI	url_data_server	param_variables	param_roi	param_time_range
ERA5	ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1979 to present	ERA5	Wind	https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47	https://dominicroye.github.io/en/2018/access-to-climate-reanalysis-data-from-r/	TRUE	TRUE	TRUE
MIRIADE	The Virtual Observatory Solar System Object Ephemeris Generator	IMCCE	Apparent magnitude of the Moon		http://vo.imcce.fr/webservices/miriade/?ephemcc	FALSE	TRUE	TRUE
SRTMGL1.003	Digital Elevation Model from the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Global 1 arc second	SRTM	Elevation	https://dx.doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/SRTM/SRTMGL1.003	https://opendap.cr.usgs.gov/opendap/hyrax/SRTMGL1.003/contents.html	FALSE	TRUE	FALSE
TAMSAT	Tropical Applications of Meteorology using SATellite data and ground-based observations	TAMSAT	Rainfall	http://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2017.63	https://www.tamsat.org.uk/data/archive	TRUE	FALSE	TRUE
VIIRS_DNB_MONTH	Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB)	VIIRS	Nighttime lights	https://doi.org/10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A1.001	https://gis.ngdc.noaa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/NPP_VIIRS_DNB/Monthly_AvgRadiance/ImageServer/	TRUE	TRUE	TRUE

Get Started

Downloading the data with getremotedata is a simple two-steps workflow :

• With the function grd_get_url(), get the URL(s) of the data for :

  • a collection : see previous section,
  • (eventually) variables,
  • (eventually) a region of interest,
  • (eventually) a time range.

• With any data download function (e.g. httr::GET() or opendapr::odr_download_data()), download the data.

Additional functions include : list collection available for download ( gdr_list_collections() ), list variables available for the collections that have variables ( gdr_list_variables() )

Example

Have a look at the vignette("get-started") for a data download, import and plot workflow !

Acknowledgment

We thank the data providers for making their data freely available, and implementing open data access protocols that enable to download chunks of data.

This research has made use of IMCCE’s Miriade VO tool

The initial development and first release of this package were financed by the MIVEGEC unit of the French Research Institute for Sustainable Development, as part of the REACT project.