movecost: Calculation of Slope-Dependant Accumulated Cost Surface, Least-Cost Paths, Least-Cost Corridors, Least-Cost Networks Related to Human Movement Across the Landscape

Provides the facility to calculate non-isotropic accumulated cost surfaces, least-cost paths, least-cost corridors, least-cost networks, ranked alternative paths, cost allocation and cost boundaries, using a number of human-movement-related cost functions that can be selected by the user. The package is built around a compute-once design: a single cost surface object is created first and then reused by every analysis function, avoiding redundant computation. Visualisation is fully decoupled from computation and is provided through 'ggplot2' methods that can be invoked, customised, and re-invoked at any time without re-running any analysis. It just requires a Digital Terrain Model, a start location and (optionally) destination locations. See Alberti (2019) <doi:10.1016/j.softx.2019.100331>.

Version: 3.0.0
Depends: R (≥ 4.1.0)
Imports: terra (≥ 1.7-0), sf (≥ 1.0-9), igraph (≥ 1.4.0), ggplot2 (≥ 3.4.0), utils, grDevices
Suggests: elevatr (≥ 0.99.0), testthat (≥ 3.0.0), knitr, rmarkdown
Published: 2026-06-15
DOI: 10.32614/CRAN.package.movecost
Author: Gianmarco Alberti [aut, cre]
Maintainer: Gianmarco Alberti <gianmarcoalberti at gmail.com>
License: GPL-2 | GPL-3 [expanded from: GPL (≥ 2)]
NeedsCompilation: no
Citation: movecost citation info
Materials: README, NEWS
In views: SpatioTemporal
CRAN checks: movecost results

Documentation:

Reference manual: movecost.html , movecost.pdf
Vignettes: movecost 3.0: a task-based guide (source, R code)

Downloads:

Package source: movecost_3.0.0.tar.gz
Windows binaries: r-devel: movecost_2.2.zip, r-release: movecost_2.2.zip, r-oldrel: movecost_2.2.zip
macOS binaries: r-release (arm64): movecost_2.2.tgz, r-oldrel (arm64): movecost_2.2.tgz, r-release (x86_64): movecost_2.2.tgz, r-oldrel (x86_64): movecost_2.2.tgz
Old sources: movecost archive

Linking:

Please use the canonical form https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=movecost to link to this page.