Basic Question on Measuring Distance Between Fixed Points and Areas in Shapefile

Question

Hi,

I am new to the ArcGIS Desktop and I am having trouble with a project.  I have a bunch of police incident reports that I have put on a map, as well as a shapefile outlining the police precincts in the city I am studying.  I want to identify all of the incidents that happen outside of, but within a 1,000 foot distance of, a given precinct.  Can anyone point me towards a tutorial that would help with this or outline the basic steps I would follow?  FYI  - I can't be given instructions that are too simple....just isn't possible 😉

Thanks,

Matt

DXXX · Answer

Hi,

I am new to the ArcGIS Desktop and I am having trouble with a project.  I have a bunch of police incident reports that I have put on a map, as well as a shapefile outlining the police precincts in the city I am studying.  I want to identify all of the incidents that happen outside of, but within a 1,000 foot distance of, a given precinct.  Can anyone point me towards a tutorial that would help with this or outline the basic steps I would follow?  FYI  - I can't be given instructions that are too simple....just isn't possible 😉

Thanks,

Matt

Get fimilar with the selet by location tool.

MatthewFriedman · Answer

While I still have the question laid out above, something else has come up and is related to the topic: how do I get rid of outliers?  I have 550,000 observations in my data set, however not all of them have properly entered coordinate data.  This is putting some of my data in Pennsylvania even though all of it should be in NYC.  How can I drop observations with coordinate data outside of a particular area?  How can I calculate the above statistics without these data points interfering?

Thanks,

Matt