Finding adjacent polygons in R (neighbors)

Question

I\'m starting with a SpatialPolygonsDataFrame which has the data to create a map of the districts of Ghana (available at http://www.diva-gis.org/datadown). I\'m trying to c

Answer 1

I think you're looking for gTouches:

library(rgeos)
library(rgdal)

# using http://data.biogeo.ucdavis.edu/data/diva/adm/GHA_adm.zip

ghana <- readOGR("GHA_adm", "GHA_adm1")

gTouches(ghana, byid=TRUE)

##       0     1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9
## 0 FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE
## 1  TRUE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE
## 2  TRUE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE
## 3  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE
## 4 FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE
## 5 FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE
## 6 FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE
## 7 FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE
## 8 FALSE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
## 9  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE

On a quick glance, it looks right:

I'm not sure which Ghana administrative district file you are using, so that was a guess and those are in polygon order, so you'll need to poke at ghana@data and map the entries to admin district names.