topic Re: Aggregating fields on spatial join or dissolve in ArcGIS Spatial Analyst Questions

Aggregating fields on spatial join or dissolve

RobertStevens — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 21:26:25 GMT

This comment applies specifically to the tools "Spatial Join" and "Dissolve"

in the toolbox of ArcGIS desktop. (I am running 10.3.1)

The interface to these tools allows one to aggregate fields (eg. take sum or mean or median or...) when multiple

feature classes are dissolved or when multiple target feature classes

match the criteria for a spatial join to a target class.

Sound good? Well, no, not really; not as implemented.

For each field that you wish to aggregate

you have to specify how you wish to aggregate it,

or whether to ignore it in the dissolve/join.

I have some Business Analyst (BA) datasets. I want to dissolve

the data by combining multiple census tracts into

a larger geographic area of my own definition.

The BA dataset has about 3000 fields.

Many of these are things like population counts

in various age ranges (hundreds of fields, if not thousands)

That means that I have to point and click myself

through 3000 fields specifying for each whether

I wish to ignore it or how to aggregate it.

Are you going to pay my carpal tunnel treatment bills?

Either my understanding of the python interface

is at fault, or that interface is totally unusable.

(Aside: And BTW why isn't there a tool to join

a target dataset to various source datasets

on a common field, but to aggregate the

data when there are many source records

matching the target record).

Would anyone from ESRI like to comment?

Re: Aggregating fields on spatial join or dissolve

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 22:06:14 GMT

To get a response from esri, it would be best to contact tech support directly. This is a user forum and may or not be attended by someone from esri that may be able to help. If I am not mistaken, this advise has been issued before.

Re: Aggregating fields on spatial join or dissolve

RobertStevens — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:26:56 GMT

Well, I would be interested from a response from anyone

who has a workaround. It is hardly a bug.

Just a deficiency. Isn't this the place

for such comments?

Re: Aggregating fields on spatial join or dissolve

DanPatterson_Retired — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:34:39 GMT

Perhaps it is your example datasets that don't get attention There is this place.. Business and Commercial

which deals with related issues and even references the business analyst explicitly. Perhaps targeting that Place might even attract esri employees that are on its dev list. Just a thought.

Re: Aggregating fields on spatial join or dissolve

Jason_RobinsonRobinson — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 21:04:57 GMT

Hi Robert,

Once you have your tract based polygon layer using Append Data would be the most appropriate to summarize Business Analyst dataset (BDS) layers. If you wanted to summarize tracts specifically to a polygon layer there are a couple of ways to go about it like creating a custom tract BDS layer with Custom Data Setup or temporarily modifying the hybrid apportionment method on the Data tab in Business Analyst preferences.

Regards,

Jason R.