Generate different number of points for multiple features in shapefile using R

Question

I have a shapefile that contains roughly 200,000 features, each with a unique Zone Code. Within each of these features I would like to randomly place n points. A separate dataset contains a list of the unique Zone Codes and the number of random points required. The end result I am after is a list of Zone Code's with a set of unique x,y coordinates for however many points are required for each feature.

I need to do this in R and have some code that does the job. However, it is not very quick and takes almost a day to complete. I am looking for any help in speeding up the process.

Here is an example of the code I am using (with a shapefile and dataset that contains 196 features):

require("rgdal")

download.file("https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27869346/Zone_ZIP.zip", "Zone_ZIP.zip")
unzip("Zone_ZIP.zip")
Zone_Shape <- readOGR(".", "ZONE_CD")

Zone_Data <- read.csv("https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27869346/ZONE_DATA.csv",header=TRUE)

Points_All <- NULL
for(i in 1:nrow(Zone_Data)){
if(Zone_Data[i,2]>0){
Zone_Shape_Single <- Zone_Shape[Zone_Shape@data$ZONE_CD %in% Zone_Data[i,1], ]
Points <- spsample(Zone_Shape_Single, Zone_Data[i,2], type="random", iter=10)
Points_DF <- cbind(Zone_Data[i,1],as.data.frame(Points))
Points_All <- rbind(Points_All, Points_DF)
}
}

Answer 1

For starters: instead of that rbind, make Points_All a list, and assign each Points_DF result to it with Points_All[[i]] <- Points_DF. Then do a single rbind of all the list elements at the end. Have a look at this example gist.

You should also join your csv to the attribute table of your shp, so that your sample numbers become another attribute. Then you can ditch the if loop and just iterate over polygons. Look at the documentation for merge, your code should look something like x@data <- merge(x@data, csv, by = 'common_field', all.x = T, all.y = F).