Tabulate Intersection Reading More Features Than the Inputs Have

[AlexVerville]

Hi, 

I am trying to run a tabulate intersect on an impervious surface layer which contains 88,000 features. My zone feature class contains 112 features. Tabulate intersect has been running for about 17 hours and the geoprocessing window shows that it is reading feature 126,559,100. Why is it reading almost a hundred million more features than the inputs have?

I have noticed that tabulate intersection takes a long time to run on the impervious surface layers I derive from orthoimagery. Maybe its the number of vertices or the number of feature or both? Would it be better if I merged all of the features into 1?

I am using ArcGIS Pro 2.8.1. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[dajaho]

I just ran into the same problem again while performing Tabulate Intersection in the Model Builder and finally found that the tool might not be ideal for use cases with a high number of features and / or over a large area as it appears to be prone to the "godzilla"-problem (in Esri terms). I tried to mitigate the areal problem by using cartographic partitions which helped reducing the processing time for Tabulate Intersection but by adding many features (according to cartographic partitions) to the geodatabase, the operation became much slower again. It is possible to speed up the geodatabase by using the tool Compact Geodatabase but when using the tool in the Model Builder it becomes slower with every iteration, so this approach may not be useful either.

Tabulate Intersection basically combines Intersection with Aggregation, so others might want to consider performing just a (Pairwise) Intersection and aggregate the data according to their own needs (for example using R or the Aggregation-tool built into ArcGIS Pro). This might help cutting time.

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[ChristopherDennison]

Hey everyone!

I know this thread is a bit old, but I believe I am having a similar issue and need some guidance. I have been trying to use tabulate intersection to determine the proportion of a number of buffers that are taken up by an input feature (polygon), and am wondering how best to "Split" these polygons to achieve greater efficiency with the tabulate intersection tool. I have tried creating a grid that covers the map extent and using this in the "Split (Analysis)" tool, but not sure I am on the right track.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[AlexVerville]

Hi Christopher,

I recommend using the "Intersect (Analysis Tools)" tool. That's how I have been doing it and haven't had any issues.

Alex