The geomorphic reason that there is flat land next to a river is because it is the flood plane. That kind of land looks tempting, but can be deadly. Obviously, GIS analysis could add some kind of distance metric from a river to a usability score, but the analyst needs to know about the problem first.
Just a bit of "ground truthing" from a professional geoscientist.
Everyone that buys a house or land knows these maps and checks them since the last deadly flood happened a few years ago. I cannot believe that the US decided to defund the offices that help to gather these kind of information.
For example, using GIS data combined with meteorological forecasts, a hydrological model may predict water levels of rivers or flood plains. If nobody is around to run the hydrological model on today’s data, you’re not getting your flood warning today.
Freely available Lidar and derived products (via the USGS API) for nearly the entire country makes working with elevation data a pleasure.
The past 30 years have yielded tons of new hazard maps, but communities refuse to implement them in any meaningful way because of capitalism.
So it really doesnt matter how good our analysis and predictive powers are if the policies are never enforced.
If the market were allowed to operate, no one would be able to afford these houses on the coast. And in many cases that would be a good thing. Instead, the politicians have decided that beachfront property is some kind of fundamental right that we should all collectively pay for.
Everyone wants to believe that they will one day own a house on the beach. Nobody wants to believe that they will one day need the best medical care.
(Sorry for the typo.)