createVisits: Create unique visits IDs
In BIRDS: Biodiversity Information Review and Decision Support

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Examples

Takes a data.frame and a vector of column names and classifies each row of the data.frame based on the combination of values in the specified columns.

createVisits(
  x,
  idCols = c("locality", "recordedBy"),
  timeCols = c("day", "month", "year"),
  grid = NULL,
  gridIdCol
)

`x`	An object of class `data.frame`, `sf` or `SpatialPointsDataFrame` including at least the columns specified that are used to identify a visit.
`idCols`	A vector with the names of the columns other (than time columns) that are used to identify a visit. This variable cannot be empty. At least the recorders name or any other ID must be provided. Default is the Darwin Core variables `c("locality", "recordedBy")`.
`timeCols`	A vector with the names of the time columns that are used to identify a visit. If timeCols=NULL then time is ignored to create a visit ID. Default is the Darwin Core variables `c("day", "month", "year")`.
`grid`	Either `NULL` to be ignored or an object of class `sf`, `SpatialPolygons` or `SpatialPolygonsDataFrame` defining the maximum extent of visits effort. Then x must be an object of class sf
`gridIdCol`	column in grid with ids.

What a visit should be is not always clearly defined and extractable in a dataset. A reasonable assumption is that a visit could be identified from the records made by one person on a certain day and at a specific location or site. The default value for the variable column is therefore that a visit is identified by the Darwin Core variables c("locality", "day", "month", "year", "recordedBy").

A vector of the same length as the number of rows as the data.frame with a unique number for each combination of the values in the specified columns.

OB <- organizeBirds(bombusObs)
tmp.vis <- createVisits(bombusObs,
                        idCols=c("locality", "recordedBy"),
                        timeCols=c("day", "month", "year"),
                        gridIdCol = "id")
visits(OB, name = "visNoRecorder", useAsDefault = TRUE) <- tmp.vis