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geomander

ANALYTICS
Velocity0.0

Geographic Tools for Studying Gerrymandering

github.com/christopherkenny/geomander ↗

A redistricting toolkit that grows mostly by wiring in new public data sources

redistrictinggeospatialpolitical-datar-packagedata-access
◆Current state
geomander provides geographic tools for redistricting analysis in R — matching and aggregating across block, VTD and district geometries, spatial diagnostics, and download helpers for the datasets the field relies on. Recent work splits between data access, with fetchers added for Jeffrey B. Lewis's historical congressional districts and RPV Near Me, and performance, with 2.5.0 delivering large speed gains in geo_match().
◆Where it's heading
The package is consolidating as infrastructure rather than expanding its analytical surface. Each release either adds a source of redistricting data that users would otherwise download by hand, or makes the core geographic matching operations faster and more correct — the normalized global Moran's I correction and the block-level geometry mismatch fix both fall in the second category. geo_match() being the target of the most recent release confirms where the hot path is.
◆Prediction
With geo_match() now optimised, the remaining friction is in the download helpers, several of which have needed repair after upstream changes; expect the next release to consolidate or harden those fetchers rather than add analysis functions.

◆Recent moves

  1. 8mo ago

    Large speed gains in geo_match()

    Optimises geo_match(), the geographic correspondence function most of the package's workflows route through. A single-item release aimed squarely at the hot path.

    View source ↗
  2. 2y ago

    Fetchers for Lewis historical districts and RPV Near Me

    Adds get_lewis() for Jeffrey B. Lewis's historical congressional district shapefiles and get_rpvnearme() for RPV Near Me datasets, and corrects the normalized global Moran's I calculation. Widens the data the package can pull in while fixing a diagnostic users would have taken at face value.

    View source ↗
  3. 3y ago

    Maximum inscribed circle centres and BAF-to-VTD approximation

    Adds st_circle_center() and geos_circle_center() for the centroid of the maximum inscribed circle, plus baf_to_vtd() for approximating block assignment files at VTD level, and removes an indirect download in get_alarm() that produced mismatched block-level geometry.

    View source ↗
  4. 5y ago

    Repository tag marking CRAN release 1.0.8

    A tag recording the repository state at CRAN release 1.0.8, with no accompanying change description.

    View source ↗