How do I create a flow map to specific points?

Question

Hello Everyone!

I am new to ArcGIS, so I might be asking a simple question. My work gave me the task to create a flow map from specific points of interest to the visitor's specific census block group. The data I am working with is similar to the below table. The vistior_location is {"Census Block Group":"Number of visitors"}. In my project, I created a layer for census block groups in the region I am working in and converted the polygons to centroid points. The main question is how do I get ArcGIS pro to draw lines from the points of interest to the specific census block group of the visitor? Also, I would also like to display the number of visitors corresponding to the line color, like if 1-15 visitors from that CBG then the line is blue, 16-30 the line is red, etc. Last, I am running ArcGIS Pro 2.5.

In summary, I need to create a flow map from a location to their corresponding census block groups

Thank you everyone for your time and help in advance.

Place_IDLocation_NameLatitudeLongitudeVisitor_CBG_Location123456McDonald's40.756631-73.988039{1010:20,4001:5,1007:3}654321Burger King40.719457-73.986530{2003:5,1010:3}314562Wendy's40.702661-74.012545{1010:3,1012:5,5003:20,1432:8}

Robert LeClair · Answer

It does seem that the multiple BG's in one field may be causing the error.  Can you break the multiple BG items into singular items and retry the workflow?  What is the size of your data?

NateDavis · Answer

Thank you for responding. I do have Business Analyst, but ArcGIS Pro keeps producing an error saying that it is not able to match the points together. I am able to create lines of the POI to BG when they are inside the same BG, but none of the POI would connect to the specific BG as specified in the column. My guess is that in the "destination" column there are multiple BGs like {1010:3,1012:5,5003:20,1432:8} inside the single column. Do you know any work around for ArcGIS to process this?

I also tried working through method #3 but it produce points being connect to all the other points, and ArcGIS insights is having difficulties loading the size of data.

Robert LeClair · Answer

Depending on your licensing, I believe this can be accomplished a few different ways:

* With Business Analyst, there's a GP tool called "Generate Desire Lines" that requires 2 point feature classes to do this workflow.  You'd have to do a few steps to get the count number generated for the color schemes you listed.
* With ArcGIS Insights, there's Link Analysis workflows that would work I suspect.  You can see a tutorial here.
* A third workflow is a series of tools using Near GP tool, followed by the Add XY Coordinates GP to create a line between the NEAR_X/NEAR_Y fields from the Near output table to the polygon centroid of the Block Groups polygon.  Then to create the line between the POI to the BG, use the XY to Line tool using the 2 FC's XY coordinates.  I'll have to think about the COUNT item.

Hope this helps!  Good luck!