rcrisp: An R package for urban river space delineation

rcrisp provides tools to automate the morphological delineation of riverside urban areas—i.e., the spaces surrounding a river where social, environmental and economic phenomena are assumed to be influenced by the presence of the river—following a method developed in Forgaci (2018, 88-89). The method is based on the premise that analyses of riverside urban phenomena are often done without a clear and consistent spatial definition of the area of interest and that a morphological delineation—combining the natural terrain of the river valley and the configuration of the overlapping built urban fabric—can provide a more objective and comparable approach. Delineations following this morphological delineation method enable integrated local analyses, where data from different sources must be combined within a neutral spatial unit, as well as global cross-case analyses, which require a spatial unit that is comparable across different geographic contexts. The method proposes a hierarchical delineation of four spatial units: the river valley, the river corridor, the corridor segments, and the river space (i.e., the area between the riverbanks and the first line of buildings). Accordingly, rcrisp includes functions to delineate each, as well as an all-in-one function that runs all desired delineations. The package also includes functions to download and preprocess OpenStreetMap (OSM) and global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data, which are required as input data for the delineation process. The resulting delineations can be used in any downstream analysis of riverside urban areas that can benefit from consistent and comparable spatial units, including land use, accessibility, and ecosystem services assessments.