R/openair-package.R

In davidcarslaw/ggopenair: Tools for the Analysis of Air Pollution Data

##' Tools for the analysis of air pollution data
##' 
##' This is a UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
##' funded knowledge exchange project that aims to make available innovative
##' analysis tools for air pollution data; with additional support from
##' Defra. The tools have generally been developed to analyse data of
##' hourly resolution (or at least a regular time series) both for air
##' pollution monitoring and dispersion modelling. The availability of
##' meteorological data at the same time resolution greatly enhances the
##' capabilities of these tools.
##' 
##' The project code is also developed using R-Forge
##' (\url{http://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/openair/}).
##'  
##' \code{openair} contains collection of functions to analyse air pollution
##' data. Typically it is expected that data are hourly means, although most
##' functions consider other time periods. The principal aim to make
##' available analysis techniques that most users of air quality data and
##' model output would not normally have access to. The functions consist of
##' those developed by the authors and a growing number from other
##' researchers.
##' 
##' The package also provides access to a wide range of data
##' sources including the UK Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN),
##' networks run by King's College London (e.g. the LAQN), the Scottish Air
##' Quality Network (SAQN) and the European Environment Agency
##' \emph{airbase} database with over 8,000 sites.
##' 
##' The package has a number of requirements for input data and these are
##' discussed in the manual (available on the \code{openair} website at
##' \url{http://www.openair-project.org}). The key requirements are that a
##' date or date-time field must have the name `date' (and can be
##' \code{Date} or \code{POSIXct} format), that wind speed is represented as
##' `ws' and that wind direction is `wd'.
##' 
##' Most functions work in a very straightforward way, but offer many
##' options for finer control and perhaps more in-depth analysis.
##' 
##' The \code{openair} package depends on several other packages written by
##' other people to function properly.
##' 
##' To ensure that these other packages are available, they need to be
##' installed, and this requires a connection to the internet. Other
##' packages required come with the R base system.  If there are problems
##' with the automatic download of these packages, see
##' \url{http://www.openair-project.org} for more details.
##' 
##' NOTE: openair assumes that data are not expressed in local time where
##' 'Daylight Saving Time' is used. All functions check that this is the
##' case and issue a warning if TRUE. It is recommended that data are
##' expressed in UTC/GMT (or a fixed offset from) to avoid potential
##' problems with R and \code{openair} functions. The \code{openair} manual
##' provides advice on these issues (available on the website).
##' 
##' To check to see if \code{openair} has been correctly installed, try some
##' of the examples below. 
##' 
##' @author David Carslaw with initial support from Karl Ropkins
##' 
##' 
##' @references
##' Most reference details are given under the specific functions. The
##' principal reference is below but users may also wish to cite the manual
##' (details for doing this are contained in the manual itself).
##' 
##' Carslaw, D.C. and K. Ropkins, (2012) openair --- an R package for air
##'   quality data analysis.  Environmental Modelling & Software. Volume
##'   27-28, 52-61.  
##' @keywords methods
##'
##' @name openair
##' @docType package
##' 
##' @seealso See \url{http://www.openair-project.org} for up to date information on
##'   the project.  
##' 
##' @examples
##' # load example data from package
##' data(mydata)
##' 
##' # summarise the data in a compact way
##' \dontrun{summaryPlot(mydata)}
##' 
##' # traditional wind rose
##' windRose(mydata)
##' 
##' # basic plot
##' \dontrun{polarPlot(mydata, pollutant = "nox")}
##' 
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