Identify overlapping polygons within a single MULTIPOLYGON

Question

I have a multipolygon shapefile that contains thousands of records with a spatial and temporal component. I'd like to be able to identify records that overlap (the amount of overlap doesn't really matter at the moment).

Is this possible in R?

I don't have a reproducible example, but here is an image of what I'm describing. It is a multipolygon with two records that clearly overlap. I want to filter my data such all overlapping polygons are returned.

Answer 1

Considering these four polygons quickly drawn out in QGIS for example:

Then you can see how the four polygons relate using the various spatial predicate operators:

> st_overlaps(lap, sparse=FALSE)
      [,1]  [,2]  [,3]  [,4]
[1,] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
[2,] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
[3,] FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE
[4,] FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE

3 and 4 are the only ones that "overlap" in this sense. 1 and 2 don't overlap because 2 is fully inside 1. Polygons do not "overlap" themselves.

However 1 intersects with 2, and 3 intersects with 4. Note also that polygons "intersect" with themselves:

> st_intersects(lap, sparse=FALSE)
      [,1]  [,2]  [,3]  [,4]
[1,]  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE
[2,]  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE
[3,] FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE
[4,] FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE

You can also do stuff like "contains" - 1 contains 2 but 2 does not contain 1. Polygons do contain themselves:

> st_contains(lap, sparse=FALSE)
      [,1]  [,2]  [,3]  [,4]
[1,]  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE
[2,] FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE
[3,] FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE
[4,] FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE

Note I've not constructed polygons that only touch along edges or nodes. Mostly because I'm never sure if the predicate functions think these overlap or intersect - but there's st_touches for that. If you want the full set of possibilities of polygon relations then use st_relate and work out what you want from the DE9-IM model string.