get_friction_surface: Get friction surface

In traveltime: Calculate Travel Times Over Space

Get friction surface

Description

Wrapper function to download friction surfaces via malariaAtlas::getRaster().

Usage

get_friction_surface(
  surface = c("motor2020", "walk2020"),
  filename = NULL,
  overwrite = FALSE,
  extent = NULL
)

Arguments

surface	"motor2020" or "walk2020".
filename	character. File name for output layer.
overwrite	logical. If TRUE filename is overwritten. If FALSE (default) and filename already exists, the existing file is returned with a warning and nothing is downloaded.
extent	Spatial extent as one of: a numeric vector specifying c(xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax), a terra SpatExtent, SpatVector, or SpatRaster from which the extent will be taken, or or 2x2 matrix See details

Details

Convenience wrapper to malariaAtlas::getRaster() to access motorised and walking travel friction layers per Weiss et al. 2020, that adds safety to check existing files before download. Surfaces can be downloaded directly from: https://malariaatlas.org/project-resources/accessibility-to-healthcare/.

Here —

• surface = "motor2020" will download "Accessibility__202001_Global_Motorized_Friction_Surface", and

• surface = "walk2020" will download "Accessibility__202001_Global_Walking_Only_Friction_Surface".

D. J. Weiss, A. Nelson, C. A. Vargas-Ruiz, K. Gligoric, S., Bavadekar, E. Gabrilovich, A. Bertozzi-Villa, J. Rozier, H. S. Gibson, T., Shekel, C. Kamath, A. Lieber, K. Schulman, Y. Shao, V. Qarkaxhija, A. K. Nandi, S. H. Keddie, S. Rumisha, P. Amratia, R. Arambepola, E. G. Chestnutt, J. J. Millar, T. L. Symons, E. Cameron, K. E. Battle, S. Bhatt, and P. W. Gething. Global maps of travel time to healthcare facilities. (2020) Nature Medicine. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1038/s41591-020-1059-1")}

extent is formatted and then passed through to malariaAtlas::getRaster() as a 2x2 matrix. It is converted into a matrix using ext_matrix. The matrix format used is as returned by sf::st_bbox() — the first column has the minimum, the second the maximum values; rows 1 & 2 represent the x & y dimensions respectively: matrix(c("xmin", "ymin", "xmax", "ymax"), nrow = 2, ncol = 2, dimnames = list(c("x", "y"), c("min", "max"))). extent must be supplied.

Troubleshooting: this function requires an internet connection. If the download fails (e.g. a warning ⁠Failed to connect to MAP geoserver⁠), a warning is given and NULL is returned. This is an issue with fetching the friction surface using malariaAtlas::getRaster(), and not an issue with traveltime itself. The server may be down or there may be an issue with that package.

Value

A SpatRaster friction surface with a single layer named "friction_surface", or NULL (with a warning) if the download fails.

Examples

# requires an internet connection
# for more examples of passing extent types see ?ext_matrix

ext <- c(111, 112, 0, 1)

get_friction_surface(
  surface = "motor2020",
  extent = ext
)

traveltime documentation built on Oct. 31, 2026, 5:06 p.m.