topic Re: Georeferencing in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Georeferencing

Ike_ — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 22:01:03 GMT

Is it possible to write a script to automate a process the process of georeferencing scanned maps?

Re: Georeferencing

AyanPalit — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 11:30:15 GMT

@Ike_ To automate the georeferencing of scanned maps in ArcGIS Pro, you can use ArcPy to write a script that applies programmatically defined control points to a raster image.

You will find this useful: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/arcgis-pro-automate-georeference-control-points/td-p/1325100

Re: Georeferencing

RichardDaniels — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:08:41 GMT

If you mean 'fully automate', Technically, yes. It would require an existing georeferenced image (a known map or air photo mosaic in the desired projection and coordinate system) to serve as the target, and your input raster image with at least one known good (e.g., NADAR at the center of the image). That one point will place the center of the image on the correct point on the target. Then image matching could occur searching for and creating tie points. Based on this the scaling, stretch of the input raster would be calculated and saved to the images world file (.e.g, .tfw). Project would then be run if needed as the last step to create the output image.

Have you looked at:

Auto Georeference

Automatically create control points for the source raster against a target raster. The source raster and target raster must be relatively close in terms of geographic location, spectral resolution, and spatial resolution for the autoregistration to work.

Re: Georeferencing

Ike_ — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:10:08 GMT

Thank you @AyanPalit . Let me give some background to the project so the community can help me. I am working for a municipality and we have some old technical drawings showing watermains and other utitlities. We call these as-builts. I have been manually dragging these drawings into ArcGIS Pro, geo-reference each and then digitize the watermains. I am looking for a way to automate the process where I can have a script that pulls or looks thorough the pdfs and geo-reference them for me.

Re: Georeferencing

Ike_ — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:10:46 GMT

Thank you @RichardDaniels . Let me give some background to the project so the community can help me. I am working for a municipality and we have some old technical drawings showing watermains and other utitlities. We call these as-builts. I have been manually dragging these drawings into ArcGIS Pro, geo-reference each and then digitize the watermains. I am looking for a way to automate the process where I can have a script that pulls or looks thorough the pdfs and geo-reference them for me.