Create a shapefile from a csv with latitude and longitude coordinates

writeShapeFile.R

# Create a shapefile from a csv with latitude and longitude coordinates in
# decimal degrees

# Install and load rdgal
install.packages(rdgal)
require(rgdal)

# Load data
data  <- read.csv("Coordinates.csv")
head(data)

# Add id so the shapefile is not empty
data$id  <- rep(1:length(data$Longitude))
head(data)

# Convert to spatial object longitude goes first 
data.SP  <- SpatialPointsDataFrame(data[,c(2,1)],data[,-c(2,1)])

str(dataMap.SP) # Now is class SpatialPointsDataFrame

# Write as shapefile inside the folder "coordinates"
writeOGR(data.SP, "coordinates", "coordinates", driver="ESRI Shapefile", layer_options= c(encoding= "UTF-8"),
         overwrite_layer=T)