h3_crosswalk: Crosswalk Between ISEA and H3 Cell IDs

In hexify: Equal-Area Hex Grids on the 'Snyder' 'ISEA' 'Icosahedron'

Crosswalk Between ISEA and H3 Cell IDs

Description

Maps cell IDs between ISEA (equal-area) and H3 grid systems by looking up each cell's center coordinate in the target grid. This enables workflows where analysis is done in ISEA (exact equal-area) and reporting in H3 (industry-standard).

Usage

h3_crosswalk(
  cell_id = NULL,
  grid,
  h3_resolution = NULL,
  isea_grid = NULL,
  direction = c("isea_to_h3", "h3_to_isea")
)

Arguments

cell_id	Cell IDs to translate. Numeric for ISEA, character for H3. When grid is a HexData object and cell_id is NULL, all cell IDs from the data are used.
grid	A HexGridInfo or HexData object. For direction = "isea_to_h3", this must be an ISEA grid. For direction = "h3_to_isea", this must be an H3 grid.
h3_resolution	Target H3 resolution for "isea_to_h3", or the source H3 resolution for "h3_to_isea". When NULL (default), the closest H3 resolution matching the ISEA cell area is selected automatically.
isea_grid	A HexGridInfo for the target ISEA grid. Required when direction = "h3_to_isea".
direction	One of "isea_to_h3" (default) or "h3_to_isea".

Details

The crosswalk works by computing the center coordinate of each source cell, then finding which cell in the target grid contains that center. This is a many-to-one mapping: multiple ISEA cells may map to the same H3 cell (or vice versa) depending on the relative resolutions.

When h3_resolution is NULL and direction = "isea_to_h3", the H3 resolution whose average cell area is closest to the ISEA cell area is chosen automatically. This gives the best 1:1 correspondence.

Value

A data frame with columns:

isea_cell_id

ISEA cell ID (numeric)

h3_cell_id

H3 cell ID (character)

isea_area_km2

Area of the ISEA cell in km2

h3_area_km2

Geodesic area of the H3 cell in km2

area_ratio

Ratio of ISEA area to H3 area

See Also

cell_area for per-cell area computation, hex_grid for creating grids

Examples

# ISEA -> H3
grid <- hex_grid(area_km2 = 1000)
cells <- lonlat_to_cell(c(0, 10, 20), c(45, 50, 55), grid)
xwalk <- h3_crosswalk(cells, grid)
head(xwalk)

# H3 -> ISEA
h3 <- hex_grid(resolution = 5, type = "h3")
h3_cells <- lonlat_to_cell(c(0, 10), c(45, 50), h3)
xwalk2 <- h3_crosswalk(h3_cells, h3, isea_grid = grid, direction = "h3_to_isea")

hexify documentation built on March 1, 2026, 1:07 a.m.