I am trying to combine the two datasets found here:
One is a world map taken from map_data('world') and the other is lat/lon of black carbon emissions in 1960. I would like to merge the two so that I can summarize emissions based on country. So far I have been unsuccessful.
My impression is the sp package is the right tool here. Specifically, the over() function with the world map being a SpatialPolygonsDataFrame and the emissions data being a SpatialPointsDataFrame but I can't seem to get things to work.
Any help is much appreciated. I would also be happy to hear of any suggestions for solid references on GIS and R.
EDIT: I ended up using data(countriesCoarse) from the rworldmap package instead of map_data('world'). This had the advantage of already being a SpatialPolygonsDataFrame. over() now appears to be working as desired. I took down the broken link for the data.