Determining population inside a polygon

Question

Hi everyone, I'm currently working on determining the population within a polygon using local data and ArcGIS pro. I had a shapefile of all districts of a city, with data about the area and population of each district.

I add a random point in the centre of the city and draw 5 km radius circles. I need to determine the population within the circle. I'm new to GIS in general so I don't know what to do now. I would really appreciate your help. Thank you 🙂

DavidCooper · Answer

Thank you, that was very helpful!!! 😃

DavidPike · Answer

You can do this using the Tabulate Intersection (Analysis)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation tool.

Input Zones Features - your circle buffers

Input Class Features - Your District features

Sum Field - Population number field from your district feature

This would give you the number of estimated persons per intersection of each zone and district.

Each zone may return multiple rows (i.e. 1 for each district it intersects) so you would have to add those row values together.

This is also all based on the assumption that the population is evenly distributed within each district - something you can't avoid unless you have more data e.g. residential dwellings or urban area polygons, then also again you have to make the the assumption that population is evenly distributed within each urban area or residential point and so on and so on...