In OutdoorRD/trailcountR: Transform Raw Trail Counter Data

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>",
  fig.path = "man/figures/README-",
  out.width = "100%"
)

Package Description

The goal of trailcountR is to make it easier to process visitor count data collected in the field. Land managers use a variety of methods to gather visitor traffic counts at the trail or forest level. These methods may include deploying infrared counters at trail heads (TRAFx), magnetic vehicle counters, in-person parking lot counts, cameras and others. These raw formats with instantaneous or hourly counts must be transformed into daily counts and combined to be used in downstream analyses.

Installation

You can install the development version from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("OutdoorRD/trailcountR")

Code Usage Examples

Example 1

Once you have parsed IR data for a specific device, the days included will only be dates that the device logged a count. If the site had no visitors for a day or the device was broken, then no counts are logged for that day and thus that date will not be included in the data. To create a complete timeseries for IR data, use the make_complete_timeseries() function. Any dates where the counter was not triggered will have an NA count.

library(trailcountR)
library(magrittr)

# create a complete timeseries for IR data
df <- tibble::tibble(
    PlacementID = c(102, 102, 102, 102),
    date = c("19-06-04", "19-06-07", "19-06-08", "19-06-10"),
    time = c("14:00", "14:00", "13:01", "12:02"),
    count = c(15, 13, 12, 50))
df %>% 
    kableExtra::kbl() %>% 
    kableExtra::kable_material_dark(lightable_options = "striped")

# make the complete timeseries
df2 <- make_complete_timeseries(df)
df2 %>% 
    kableExtra::kbl() %>% 
    kableExtra::kable_material_dark(lightable_options = "striped")

Example 2

Once a complete timeseries has been generated for an IR counter, there might be certain days which have missing counts. This could occur when no visitors triggered the counter for that day or when the counter has stopped working. For downstream analyses, these missing counts should be replaced with a count of zero. The insert_zero_counts() function makes this happen.

library(trailcountR)
library(magrittr)

## Make toy IR counter data
df <- tibble::tibble(
    PlacementID = c(102, 102, 102, 102),
    date = c("19-06-04", "19-06-07", "19-06-08", "19-06-10"),
    time = c("14:00", "14:00", "13:01", "12:02"),
    count = c(15, 13, 12, 50))

# complete the timeseries
df2 <- make_complete_timeseries(df)

df2 %>% 
    kableExtra::kbl() %>% 
    kableExtra::kable_material_dark(lightable_options = "striped")

# replace the missing counts with zeros 
df3 <- insert_zero_counts(df2)
df3 %>% 
    kableExtra::kbl() %>% 
    kableExtra::kable_material_dark(lightable_options = "striped")