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postcodElapse

PostcodElapse is an R-package for estimating the levels of air pollution including fine particulate matter (PM2.5), black carbon (BC), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) at postal code level in the Netherlands. The package utilizes the ELAPSE Land Use Regression model and a GeoPackage containing spatial data on all Dutch postal codes.

We gratefully acknowledge Kees de Hoogh for developing the ELAPSE model and for granting permission to use it within this package.

Quick start

R-spatial

PostcodElapse relies on the terra package for spatial data handling. Ensure that terra is correctly install for your operating system, detailed instructions are available in the terra installation guide.

Postcode database

PostcodElapse requires an external database with the spatial data on Dutch postcodes. Two databases are currently supported, download the preferred database:

  1. BAG (Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen contains for every building in the Netherlands the location and postal code. Package size 8GB

  2. PC6 (Postcode6) provides the geographic area for every Dutch postal code. Package size 0.5GB

Installation

Download the latest release of postcodElapse, and install the package using:

install.packages("postcodElapse_0.1.4.tar.gz")

If you are using RStudio, you can also install via the Packages panel:

  1. Open the Packages panel and click Install.
  2. Set Install from to Package Archive File (.zip; .tar.gz).
  3. Use the file picker to navigate to the downloaded postcodElapse release.
  4. Select the file an click Install.

Example 

library(postcodelapse)

postcodElapse(c("8917DD", "9712CP"), "~/home/data/bag-light.gpkg")
#> Guessed db type to be: BAG
#>   postcode n BCFULL_avg NO2FULL_avg O3FULLa_avg O3FULLc_avg O3FULLw_avg
#> 1   8917DD 5   1.637956    28.14168    60.92046    46.11469    76.49764
#> 2   9712CP 8   1.735555    30.59054    62.10056    45.57095    78.96525
#>   PM25FULLt_avg BCFULL_min NO2FULL_min O3FULLa_min O3FULLc_min O3FULLw_min
#> 1      15.56012   1.587243    26.23440    59.97551    45.97074    75.85178
#> 2      14.88488   1.731880    30.42194    61.52977    45.15801    78.12064
#>   PM25FULLt_min BCFULL_max NO2FULL_max O3FULLa_max O3FULLc_max O3FULLw_max
#> 1      15.34430   1.674501    29.16468    62.22285    46.32064    77.46275
#> 2      14.84346   1.736912    30.79544    62.71158    45.99726    79.83811
#>   PM25FULLt_max
#> 1      15.64734
#> 2      15.03059

Above, the air pollution levels for two postal codes are estimated with the BAG database. All air pollutant levels are provided in µg/m3. The n column indicates the number of buildings found per postal code. Any missing data is marked with NA. When using PC6, the output has the same structure.

Common issues

NULL value passed as symbol address

loadElapse() Returns spatical rasters (spatrasters) these cannot be saved into the workspace image. Doing this will result in errors like the one below:

ggplot2::autoplot(elapse)
#> Error in .Call(list(name = "CppField__get", address = <pointer: (nil)>,  : 
#>   NULL value passed as symbol address

To fix this remove all spatrasters with ?rm, and re-run the script. When closing Rstudio or R don’t save the workspace image, or remove any spatrasters with rm() before saving.