hurr_choropleth {hurricaneexposure}

Create a map customized for this package

Description

Creates a county choropleth map customized for displaying hurricane exposure. This function is used as a helper function within other mapping functions in the package.

Usage

hurr_choropleth(
  map_data,
  metric = "distance",
  wind_var = "vmax_sust",
  wind_source = "modeled"
)

Arguments

map_data

A dataframe with columns with FIPS numbers (in numeric class) for all counties in the eastern US (region) and the exposure value (value)

metric

Character string giving the metric to plot. Current options are "distance", "wind", and "rainfall". These options are used to customize the color palette and scale of the choropleth map produced by this function.

wind_var

A character string giving the wind variable to use. Choices are "vmax_sust" (maximum sustained winds; default), "vmax_gust" (maximum gust winds), "sust_dur" (minutes of sustained winds of 20 m / s or higher) and "gust_dur" (minutes of gust winds of 20 m / s or higher). If the Extended Best Tracks wind radii are used as the source of wind data, the "gust_dur" option cannot be selected.

wind_source

A character string specifying the source to use for the winds. Options are "modeled", for estimates based on running a wind model from Best Tracks data inputs, and "ext_tracks", for estimates based on the wind radii in the Extended Best Tracks data. See the help files for the datasets storm_winds and ext_tracks_wind in the hurricaneexposuredata package for more details on each of these sources for wind estimates. For the gust wind estimates, these are based on applying a gust factor of 1.49 to the sustained wind estimates in both wind data sources.

Details

The function only maps counties in states likely to be exposed to Atlantic basin tropical storms.

Value

A ggplot object with a map of hurricane exposure in eastern US counties