Latest Contributions by ZachSchenk

Hi All, Looking for some advice on putting together a work flow for calculating routes over a cost raster. The goal of this project is to determine the best routes from many origins to many destinations, while accounting for costs of travelling through different sections of the raster. For confidentiality reasons I can't discuss my actual scenario, but for example, trying to route a fleet of loud vehicles to avoid area's of high population density.  My original thought was to do a origin destination cost matrix, but the issue I'm having is that the only "mode" to determine the routes is either "time" or "distance". If, instead, I wanted to calculate optimal "cost" (in this case, minimal distance travelled in area's of high population, how would I go about doing this? Any input would be great. I currently have access to ArcGIS Pro Standard, with both the Network and Spatial Analyst extensions. I am fairly new to these extensions, but do have a basic understanding of how they work.     ... View more

Hi all, I've got myself a tricky situation that I hope someone can help me out with. Explaining the problem is a bit tricky, but I'll do my best. Please note that I am certainly not GIS expert, so please do your best to explain any solution as simple and detailed as you can. I'm using ArcMAP. What I'm trying to do is take points along a road network, and determine the population in a 1 mile radius. To do this I have created a points layer, and have found a polygon layer with a certain population in each polygon. The polygon's range in size from a few hundred square km's to a hundred square kilometers (Picture #1). The way I've done this so far is to create a 1 mile buffer around each point (Picture #2). Now in order to determine the population in each buffer zone, I need to know the population density in each population polygon (I have this calculated) as well as the area that each mile buffer includes. When I union these two layers, my result is a layer with population density and area for each buffer. From there I can easily determine the population in each buffer (picture #3). However, it starts to become very difficult to do this when the points get closer together, because the buffer zone's begin to overlap eachother. When I try to union the buffer and the population polygons, it looks at each buffer overlap as its own individual polygon (picture #4). So now instead of 2 records for my one point, I end up with 237 records for my point. Across my entire network, I have a couple hundred thousand points. My computer can't handle the hundreds of millions of overlaps this causes. Does anybody have a way I can avoid this? I tried to dissolve the buffer layer, but when I Union the dissolved buffer it goes back to looking at each overlap as its own polygon, and I still end up with 100 million records. I'm not committed to using the union method I've explained using above, but any attempt to use other methods such as spatial join doesn't seem to provide the information I need in the new layer (such as the area of the various population polygons it contains). Hopefully I've managed to explain my problem well enough, and haven't made you all too bored to read this entire problem. Thanks in advance for any suggestions or advice! I'll answer any questions you throw at me as best I can. Thanks, Zach ... View more

Hi all, I've got what I would imagine is a relatively unique challenge. I have a route layer that I've created and calibrated with a series of other layers. I can currently take any GPS co-ordinate and convert it to a mileage. Now what I need to do is to take this route layer and export it so that others can see it in a table format (CSV, SQL, etc). In case this sounds confusing, I'll try to explain it another way: I'm trying to take a route layer (where I can only see the mileage by using the "Identify Route Location" tool) and make it such that I can I have a table that looks like the attached table below. I would imagine that there should be a way to simply export the route in order to do this, but any method to achieve the table below should be fine. It is important to note that I need the mileage to increase at a steady rate (ideally 0.001 miles but there is some flexibility).  I hope what I'm asking for is clear, but if not please let me know below and I will attempt to clarify  Thanks in advance! -Zach ... View more

Hello All, I'm trying to do some external analysis on a line that I have in ArcGIS. In order to do this, I need to export the line geometry so that I can see the line as a series of 'nodes'. Is there any way to find and export these nodes to a csv format? I know this is possible with QGIS so I expect its possible in ArcGIS as well... but I just can't seem to find it. I also don't really need it in a csv, basically I need to run these points through a matlab script to calculate curvature ( I find that ArcGIS Curves and Lines tool isn't particularly useful for what I'm trying to do), so as long as these points are in a format that Matlab can read, I'm happy. Any tips or help is appreciated! Thanks, Zach ... View more