Technical Workshops

Fundamentals of GIS Analysis: Overlay

Dale Honeycutt Scott Murray Ghislan Prince

Questions for you

First user conference? 20th user conference? Never used geoprocessing? Use geoprocessing every now and then? Use geoprocessing often? Use ModelBuilder?

Goals and Objectives

Learn the basics of using geoprocessings overlay tools

Understand how overlay tools, in combination with simple table operations, can answer a variety of geographic questions Absorb some general geoprocessing and tips and tricks See also Companion session on Proximity

Tip of the day

Computers are really stupid they can only give answers. They cant ask questions. -- Pablo Picasso

What is GIS?

What makes GIS different from other software systems?

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It makes maps? It stores coordinates?

Our opinion It can answer 3 basic questions to derive new information:

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Whats on top of what? (overlay) Whats close to what? (proximity) Whats connected to what? (connectivity)

Full-function systems, like ArcGIS, do three things

Compute

Visualize

Store & Manage

Geoprocessing = compute with data

Compute

Geoprocessing

Automate GIS Tasks

Modeling & Analysis

Whats on top of what? (Overlay)

The most basic question in geography

Overlay basics the Venn diagram

Demo

Key points

Intersect = logical AND Union = logical OR

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You can structure any overlay query with just these two tools

However, we provide out-of-the-box tools for common overlay queries, such as:
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Identity = a + (a Erase = a NOT b

AND

b)

SymDiff = (a OR b) (a AND b) Update = (a NOT b) + b

These tools optimized for type of query Feature attributes are carried through the operation

Overlay tools and geometry types

Overlay tools that accept polygons only:

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Union Update

All other overlay tools accept a variety of geometry types

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For example: Point in polygon (overlay polygons over points) Well examine overlaying different geometry types later

Basic overlay: Two polygon layers with tabulation

Data: Council districts and census tracts

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Census has population Census tracts split by council districts

Problem what is the population of each district? Two basic methods:

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Create a table (which can be joined back to the districts) Create a new dataset of districts

Demo

Key points of demo

Know your data - do attribute values needs to be proportioned?

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Use the Make Feature Layer tool and check Use Ratio Policy for attributes to be apportioned Caveat: assumes data distributed uniformly across the area a BIG assumption! Summary Statistics, Frequency Join Field, Join Examine results with identify tool, select tool, opening table, etc. Even us old pros have to do this!

Use simple table operations on output data

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Join outputs back to input

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Experiment with small datasets!

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Key points of demoDissolve

Dissolve allows you to aggregate geometries based on attribute

Result is a new dataset You are responsible for choosing how to aggregate attribute values
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Many options how to aggregate attribute values We used Sum in demo

Spatial Join

The Spatial Join tool is part of the Overlay toolset

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Joins two feature classes based on a spatial query rather than an attribute query

Spatial Join does not apportion attributes More on Spatial Join later
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Its a very useful and powerful tool

More overlay with tabulation

More tabulation

Scenario:
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Dataset of forest types Dataset of districts (Additionally, find the percent area of each forest type)

For each district, find the area of each forest type

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Demo

Key Points

Use Intersect tool to combine features Calculate Field to calculate acres

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!shape.area@acres! See resource center blog: Accessing feature shape in Calculate Field

Summary Statistics to sum area for each unique combination of zone and vegtype

How Pivot Table was used in demo

Dissecting overlapping polygons

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Dissecting overlapping polygons

This is a common scenario:

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Single feature class of polygons Polygons overlap each other due to how data was collected You need to characterize the overlap areas Spaghetti = linework from multiple sources made into polygons Meatballs = centroids (points) of each polygon

Methodology spaghetti and meatballs

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Demo

The spaghetti and meatballs recipe

Create polygons from spaghetti

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Feature To Polygon tool Feature to Point tool

Create meatballs a point inside of polygons

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Use Intersect with the meatballs and the original polygons to collect attributes Summarize attributes and join them back to spaghetti polygons Remove holes created by the Feature To Polygon tool using the Select tool

Overlaying points, lines, and polygons

Point in Polygon, Polygon on Line, Line on Line

Oftentimes, you need to overlay different feature geometries Very common queries:
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Lines intersecting polygons Lines intersecting lines Points in polygons Point on lines

Lets examine some typical cases

Demo

Key Points of demo

Spatial Join great for summarizing points falling within polygons Discovered what polygons were on top of what lines Created points where lines intersect Split polygons with line features
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Used our new friend Features To Polygons along with Identity

Overlay is computationally crazy

Things to watch for

Overlaying large datasets

Overlay algorithms are extremely intricate and complex

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An 11 on the scale of computational intensity ESRI has 50 to 100 programmer years refining overlay and were constantly working on it If it was easy, everyone would be doing it! Schedule large overlays accordingly (i.e., lunch, after hours) Shut down all other applications Use beefy computers with lots of memory Result dataset may be too large for shapefiles or personal geodatabases

Overlaying large datasets is CPU and RAM intensive

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Use file geodatabases for outputs

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Scalability dataset size and integrity

Biggest problem: Number of vertices per feature

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Not the number of features Coastlines, Road casings, Boundary/outline polygons (single polygon around boundary of entire dataset) Use Dice, Check Geometry tool

For datasets from external sources

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Raster Overlay

Raster Overlay Tools

Zonal Statistics Tabulate Areas Combine (Union) Weighted Overlay

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Classic Suitability Overlay All inputs converted to the same scale Set weights for each input Weights must sum to 1 Similar to Weighted Overlay Allows float output Any weight values are allowed

Weighted Sum
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Fuzzy Overlay (Fuzzy attributes)

Conclusion

Conclusions

Overlay is the most basic questions made of geography

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Whats on top of what (The other most basic question whats near what is covered in companion session)

Overlay is almost always accompanied by some sort of table analysis

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Summary Statistics, Frequency, Pivot Table, Make Query Table, Join Field Delete unnecessary fields

Keep watchful eye out for field bloat

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Conclusions continued

Overlay computationally difficult

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If it was easy, everyone would do it Experiment with sample sets before committing to large overlays

Resources

Help system
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Overlay Analysis Table analysis and management An overview of the Overlay toolset http://resources.arcgis.com/content/geoprocessing
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Geoprocessing resource center

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Forum Blog Model and Script tool gallery

ArcScripts
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http://arcscripts.esri.com/
(The future is the resource center still much activity here, however) (Model and Script tool gallery posts show up in ArcScripts)

Resources for learning Spatial Analysis Concepts

Books: - The ESRI Guide to GIS Analysis, Volume 1: Geographic Patterns and Relationships. Andy Mitchel
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The ESRI Guide to GIS Analysis, Volume 2: Spatial Measurements and Statistics. Andy Mitchel Geographic Information Systems and Cartographic Modeling. Dana Tomlin