RArcInfo: using G.I.S. data with R

Geographical Information Systems (G.I.S.) have become powerful tools for integration, visualisation and analysis of spatial data, also providing the capability of integrating data from different sources. However, the number of statistical methods implemented in most GIS is not comparable to those we can find within R. RArcInfo is written with the aim of importing data from two of the most used formats in the G.I.S. community: Arc/Info V 7.x binary coverages and E00 files, which are supported by nearly all the G.I.S. software available nowadays. Once the data are imported into R, the user can use several packages to perform spatial analysis on the data, access to databases to integrate new data and other interesting possibilities, which increase the spectrum of statistical tools available to mine data.