Read a table from an ESRI file geodatabase (.gdb) using R

This can now be read by sf, with

vessel <- sf::st_read(dsn = "Zone9_2014_01.gdb", layer = "Zone9_2014_01_Vessel")

It returns a warning (no feature geometries present) but also a data.frame with the table. See the thread that started here: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-geo/2018-February/026344.html

I use GDAL 2.0.2 that is "shipped" with FDGB support and without a third party a FGDB driver to investigate that stuff. The test environment is Debian Jessie 64-bit.

In short, it seems, that the "layer" Zone9_2014_01_Vessel contains pure attribute data and the layer Zone9_2014_01_Broadcast contains position data. You can use a workaround within R via a system call and the conversation of the GDB to a shapefile container (last script at the end of the answer).

Here are the investigation steps:

$ mkdir ~/dev.d/gis-se.d/gdb 
$ cd ~/dev.d/gis-se.d/gdb
$ wget https://coast.noaa.gov/htdata/CMSP/AISDataHandler/2014/01/Zone9_2014_01.zip
$ unzip Zone9_2014_01.zip
$ ogrinfo Zone9_2014_01.gdb Zone9_2014_01_Vessel | head -20
Had to open data source read-only.
INFO: Open of `Zone9_2014_01.gdb'
      using driver `OpenFileGDB' successful.

Layer name: Zone9_2014_01_Vessel
Geometry: None <---------------------------- HERE 
Feature Count: 1282
Layer SRS WKT:
(unknown)
FID Column = OID
MMSI: Integer (0.0)
IMO: Integer (0.0)
CallSign: String (255.0)
Name: String (255.0)
VesselType: Integer (0.0)
Length: Integer (0.0)
Width: Integer (0.0)
DimensionComponents: String (255.0)
OGRFeature(Zone9_2014_01_Vessel):1
  MMSI (Integer) = 367603345

As you see the field Geometry is set to None. You can convert the data to a shape file using ogr2ogr and get also only a dbase attribute file:

$ ogr2ogr -f 'ESRI SHAPEFILE' test Zone9_2014_01.gdb Zone9_2014_01_Vessel
$ ls test

Zone9_2014_01_Vessel.dbf

Geometries (positions) can be found in the layer Zone9_2014_01_Broadcast.

$ ogr2ogr -f 'ESRI SHAPEFILE' test Zone9_2014_01.gdb
$ ls test

Zone9_2014_01_Broadcast.dbf  
Zone9_2014_01_Broadcast.shp  
Zone9_2014_01_Broadcast.prj  
Zone9_2014_01_Broadcast.shx  
Zone9_2014_01_Vessel.dbf
Zone9_2014_01_Voyage.dbf

Vessel and Voyage containing no position data according to the AIS messages protocol.

Here the complete workaround in R using a system call for the GDB to shapefile conversation and the package foreign to read the dbf's:

# Load module to get readOGR
require('rgdal');

# Load module to get read.dbf
require('foreign');

# goto the directory with the GDB stuff
setwd('~/dev.d/gis-se.d/gdb')

# Conversation to a shapefile container 
system("ogr2ogr -f 'ESRI SHAPEFILE' test Zone9_2014_01.gdb") 

# read the vessels
vessel <- read.dbf('test/Zone9_2014_01_Vessel.dbf');

# read hte voyage data
voyage <- read.dbf('test/Zone9_2014_01_Voyage.dbf');

# read the geometries in broad cast
broadcast <- readOGR('test/Zone9_2014_01_Broadcast.shp','Zone9_2014_01_Broadcast')

OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile
Source: "test/Zone9_2014_01_Broadcast.shp", layer: "Zone9_2014_01_Broadcast"
with 1639274 features
It has 10 fields

# is vessel OK?    
head(vessel)

MMSI IMO CallSign Name VesselType Length Width   DimensionC
1 367603345  NA     <NA> <NA>         50     20     6     7,13,3,3
2 563000574  NA     <NA> <NA>         70    276    40 188,88,20,20
3 367449580  NA     <NA> <NA>         31     28    10     9,19,5,5
4 367302503  NA     <NA> <NA>         31     20     8     8,12,4,4
5 304003909  NA     <NA> <NA>         71    222    32 174,48,21,11
6 210080027  NA     <NA> <NA>         71    294    32 222,72,22,10

# is voyage OK?
head(voyage)

VoyageID           Destinatio Cargo Draught        ETA  StartTime    EndTime      MMSI
1       12                 KAKE    50      20       <NA> 2014-01-01       <NA> 367603345
2       23             YOKOHAMA    70     125 2014-01-11 2014-01-01 2014-01-30 563000574
3       38         KETCHIKAN AK    31      40 2014-11-12 2014-01-01       <NA> 367449580
4       52 CLARENCE STRAIT LOGS    31      30 2014-09-12 2014-01-01       <NA> 367302503
5       62               JP TYO    71      90 2014-01-13 2014-01-01 2014-01-31 304003909
6       47           VOSTOCHNYY    71     106 2014-01-13 2014-01-01       <NA> 210080027

There is a recently released integration between the R and ArcGIS from Esri, called R ArcGIS Tools. It provides integration between R and ArcGIS making it possible to interchangeably access R tools and ArcGIS resources. You should be able to access geodatabase feature classes/tables with this integration.

Sample R tools are available here and sample tools illustrating R usage in geoprocessing scripts are here.