R script to download buildings footprints from Microsoft Bing Maps

building_footprint.R

library("sf")
library("geojsonsf")
options(timeout = 600)

url = "https://minedbuildings.blob.core.windows.net/global-buildings/dataset-links.csv"
links = read.csv(url)
# select sample data (Bangkok)
bangkok = subset(links,
                 Location == "Thailand" &
                 QuadKey %in% c(132203132, 132203133, 132203310, 132203311))

geom = character()
for (i in seq_len(nrow(bangkok))) {
  fname = paste0(bangkok$QuadKey[i], ".csv.gz")
  download.file(bangkok$Url[i], fname, mode = "wb")
  geom_tmp = readLines(fname)
  geom = c(geom, geom_tmp)
  file.remove(fname)
}

rm(geom_tmp)
geom = geojson_sfc(geom) # convert geojson to sfc
write_sf(geom, "bangkok.gpkg")