It simplifies access to swisstopo geodata within R. Currently, using swisstopo rastermaps in R is easy if: The map only incldes one single file and you know exactly what file this is. BUT: Smaller scale maps are split into multiple tiles. For example, the 1:25’000 map consists of 260 individual Tiles
Regrettably, no. This package does not give access to any raster maps, by swisstopo or otherwise. Access to this data has to be acquire elsewhere: Either through swisstopo directly or via third parties such as geodata4edu (see #1). In fact, in the current version of the package, the data has to be stored locally on your own hard drive (urgh!). My hope is however, that this will change soon so that the data can be hosted on a network folder or on a GIS Server.
Currently, it’s just me, but I’m very open to colaboration.