Polygon to raster conversion - how to sum values of overlapping polygons

[LizanneRoxburgh]

I have a shapefile with a few hundred overlapping polygons (these are minimum bounding polygons that were fitted around species distribution points). Each polygon has a value. I need to end up with a raster in which each raster cell has a value that is the summed value of the polygons that overlap with that cell. Can anyone advise on the workflow I could use in ArcGIS pro to achieve this?  Polygon to Raster does not seem to allow summing the values of the overlapping polygons. 

[Remi_Foicik · Accepted solution]

Hello Lizianne,

I don't know if I understood correctly but you can try the following workflow.

Create a Polygon Feature class like a Grid (each polygon would be a cell in your raster).

Use "the summarize within" tool where you can apply  SUM on the fields in you shapefile.
https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/analysis/summarize-within.htm

Then you can translate you feature class "grid" to a raster with "the  feature to raster" tool.

It may not be the most beautiful solution, but it can work 🙂

Another solution :  you can transform each polygon into a raster and then apply a raster calculation with all your raster.

Rémi

[LizanneRoxburgh]

Thanks Remi, that worked perfectly, as we had already set up a grid polygon for processing other layers, so this was the quickest solution. 

[DanPatterson]

An elegant solution which works is provided here

Counting and rasterizing polygon overlaps in ArcGIS Desktop? - Geographic Information Systems Stack ...

which entails union, dissolve and convert to raster

That will give you the counts within each overlapping area.

otherwise, 

Split by attribute   to get individual layers from the polygon input

Convert to raster

reclass nodata to 0

add the rasters together (Plus tool or just + )

paying attention to cell size, alignment and snap raster