UNVEILING THE POWER OF PUBLICWORKSFINANCEIT R PACKAGE FOR ANALYZING AND VISUALIZING ITALIAN SOIL DEFENSE INVESTMENTS

The package "PublicWorksFinanceIT", enables users to retrieve and analyze financial data related to public works in Italy, specifically, it focuses on soil defense investments. The data is sourced from three distinct platforms: the OpenCoesione repository, which aggregates financial information for public works founded national and European funds, the Ministry of Economy and Finance's OpenBDAP open data platform, housing all Italian funds allocated to public interventions, and the ReNDiS database, provided by ISPRA, that exclusively gathers information about interventions in soil defense. This package offers a user-friendly tool that eliminates the need for direct access to the aforementioned institutional platforms and ensures real-time updates. Additionally, all measurements, metadata, and accompanying analytical tools are provided in English, enhancing accessibility for both international and domestic users. The data from these three sources are linked using two distinct variables: the unique project code (CUP) and the local project code, ensuring that there is no duplication of data. Moreover, the data is geographically referenced, meaning that each financial observation is associated with public work in a specific municipality within a particular Italian region. This includes information on the region, province, and municipality for each dataset entry. Indeed, the dataset has been enriched with geo-references for each municipality. Users can select the reference from either the coordinates of the municipality's centroid or the areal data of the polygon shape representing the municipality. In addition to functions for data retrieval, there are also functions available for visualizing the collected data on maps, classified by various variables.