Workshop: Building Web Mapping Applications with R and Shiny

This 2.5 hour workshop will teach you the fundamentals of building interactive web mapping applications using R and Shiny, R's powerful framework for app development. By the end of the workshop, you'll have the skills to create your own reactive mapping applications that include charts, custom design components, and more.

The first hour of the workshop will cover the fundamentals of web mapping with Shiny. You'll learn how to set up and design a basic Shiny application; show a custom Leaflet map with a marker and a geocoder; and interact with your map using a variety of UI components.

The second hour will dive deeper into interactivity with Shiny and Leaflet. We will cover how to use observers and reactive components that respond to user behavior on the map; display custom map visualizations that interactively load US Census data; and link charts and other visualizations to your maps; The session will conclude with a brief primer on how to deploy and share your Shiny applications.

The last 30 minutes were a live Q&A session where we covered a variety of mapping-related questions, including how to build a dynamic app with a reverse geocoder.

What you'll get:

• Unlimited access to the workshop recording and chat log for future use;
• A step-by-step annotated tutorial in Quarto format to help you build your knowledge.

About the instructor:

Kyle Walker is an internationally-recognized researcher, consultant, and software developer in the field of spatial data science, and was the 2022 recipient of the Spatial Data Scientist of the Year award from the software company CARTO. He is the author of the book Analyzing US Census Data: Methods, Maps, and Models in R, and has published several popular software packages for spatial data science in R and Python including tidycensus that have been collectively downloaded over 1 million times.

What past workshop participants have said:

"I wanted to thank you for the amazing R mapping trainings you provided. They were extremely helpful and sparked some very exciting ideas about how our center can use these resources."

"One thing that really stood out was how you shared your own workflow through real-life examples. Seeing the direct application of tidycensus to our day-to-day tasks was a game-changer. It’s safe to say that we’re all feeling a lot more confident about integrating these techniques into our work."

"Your assistance in streamlining some of our existing workflows was a huge bonus. It’s not just the “how-to” that’s valuable, but also the practical insights you provided."

"Your excitement about the whole topic was infectious. It’s not easy to keep a group engaged... but you nailed it. Your enthusiasm made a huge difference."