Applications of R: From detecting marine heatwaves to mapping out school data

Join us for two talks showcasing some of the applications of what you can do with R!

### Amieroh Abrahams: "Detecting marine heatwaves (MHWs) by using R-programming"

Over the past three decades, anthropologically mediated warming has negatively affected marine and terrestrial ecosystems. This has ultimately resulted in major consequences for humanity and natural ecological functioning. Climate change is generally understood as the long-term rise in global mean surface temperatures. Recent studies have shown an increase in the frequency of extreme events. Extreme warming events such as marine heatwaves (MHW) are defined as a discrete prolonged anomalously warm water event. Here I will demonstrate the various R packages produced and utilized by South African scientists (heatwaveR and RmarineHeatWaves) to detect these extreme events.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

### Megan Beckett: "Exploring the South African School Directory with R"

South Africa has an incredibly diverse, expansive education system, with over 25 000 schools dotted across the country, ranging from dilapidated mud huts and blackboards underneath trees to state-of-the-art, high tech facilities.

I wanted to see how I could add value by taking some seemingly forgotten Excel files from the Department of Basic Education website, and providing a visual map to explore, understand and appreciate the diversity and complexity of our education system.

I’ll show how I used OpenStreetMaps to help geocode missing data for school locations, and then used Shiny and Leaflet to create an app which allows anybody to visually explore, understand and locate schools across our country, without having to delve into those enormous Excel files.

By the end, not only will you get an idea of how easy it is to turn legacy geospatial data into something visual, interactive and informative, but you’ll also have a unique perspective into the challenges posed by South Africa’s multifarious, multilayered, multicultural and multicoloured education system.