What's New for Spatial Analyst in ArcGIS Pro 3.7

JuanLaguna

The Spatial Analyst extension presents many new capabilities for analysis in ArcGIS Pro 3.7. To start out, the Suitability Modeler has a new approach to assign weights to multiple criteria. You can now easily create contour lines on any raster surface. There are nine new tools that span Density, Hydrology, Overlay, Proximity, and Surface analysis. Fourteen other tools have new or improved capabilities. Read on to learn more.

How to get it

ArcGIS Pro 3.7 became available on May 14, 2026.

Download from here

For a high level summary of the changes that have been made for this release, have a look at the What's New and Improved in ArcGIS Pro (May 2026) blog post.

What’s changed for Spatial Analyst?

Listed here are the main functional areas with improvements over the last release:

Suitability Modeler
Interactive Contour
Density analysis
Distance analysis
Hydrology analysis
Multivariate analysis
Overlay analysis
Proximity analysis
Surface analysis
Zonal analysis
Vertical unit support

1. Suitability Modeler

In suitability modeling, assigning weights to multiple criteria at once can be a challenge. However, comparing two criteria at a time can be a much easier approach. In this release, there is an option to do this kind of pairwise comparison. Clicking on the Pairwise Weighting button brings up a new interactive dialog where you can adjust the relative importance of criteria two at a time with a slider. A comparison matrix shows the weights for all the comparison pairs, as well as the overall consistency ratio value. Once you are satisfied with the comparisons, you can then apply the weights and run the suitability model.

See the How Assign Weights by Pairwise Comparison works help topic to learn more.

2. Interactive Contour

With the new Interactive Contour tool, you can easily create contour lines on any raster surface. When you activate the tool simply click on the map, and the tool will draw a contour line graphics layer for all connected cells that have the same value. A continuous raster surface commonly represents elevation data, but it can also represent bathymetry, temperature, salinity, or various other environmental variables.

Learn more in this blog post:
Visualize rasters with Interactive Contour in ArcGIS Pro

3. Density analysis

This release introduces a new tool for density analysis, as well as improvements for two other tools.

Raster to Weighted Points

The purpose of the new Raster to Weighted Points tool is to transform continuous surfaces into representative feature classes without losing information about spatial patterns. The parameters in the tool give you control over the number of output points and how they are distributed within the input cells. There are several normalization options to choose from to make the output values comparable. You can use output points in various feature-based modelling workflows such as classification, regression, or uncertainty assessment.

Learn more in this blog post:
Convert continuous surfaces to actionable features with Raster to Weighted Points

Other improvements

For the Value Percentile Contours and Volume Percentile Contours tools, the new Smooth Outputs parameter gives you more control over the appearance of the output. You can choose to have the output polygons continue to conform to the edges of the cells in the input raster, or you can have tool smooth the output into simpler shapes.

4. Distance analysis

Distance analysis saw improvements in performance and productivity.

Least cost corridor

For certain combinations of data and parameter settings, the Least Cost Corridor tool offers a significant performance increase in this release.

Distance accumulation and allocation

When the source input is a feature layer and no other input raster has been specified, the cell size of the output rasters from the Distance Accumulation and Distance Allocation tools will now be determined by the longer of the width or height of the input source extent, in the input spatial reference, divided by 1,000.

Optimal region connections

For the Optimal Region Connections tool, if you specify an Input Cost Raster, the processing window now defaults to use the spatial reference of that raster for the analysis.

5. Hydrology analysis

For hydrology analysis, this release introduces four new tools, as well as improvements in several other tools.

Geodesic flow direction

An essential part of hydrologic analysis is knowing how water flows across a surface. For each cell on a surface raster, the flow will be the direction of the steepest downhill path among its neighboring cells. The calculation depends on the distance between the nearest cell centers. Historically, the distance was determined on a planar basis. The new Geodesic Flow Direction tool calculates this distance on a geodesic basis, which improves the quality of the results when analyzing large geographic areas and areas in the polar regions.

For an example application, consider that you are an analyst in Ilulissat in the autonomous territory of Greenland. You are doing some modelling of meltwater flow for the Avannaata Kommunia municipality, which covers the northwest region ranging in latitude from 68.7 N to 81.1 N. However, at these latitudes distortions can arise when calculating the direction of flow using a planar method. A cell location that the original tool reported to flow south might actually flow in a different direction, such as east, when calculated using the geodesic method. For a single cell, the difference might seem small. But for an area covering the full municipality, those small per-cell differences compound into meaningful errors. Use the new Geodesic Flow Direction tool just like you would use the original Flow Direction tool and have your flow direction output accurately represent the Earth's curved shape.

Learn more in this blog post:
More Accurate Flow Direction at Any Scale: Introducing the Geodesic Method

Validate a flow direction raster

In some cases, manual post-processing workflows can create loops (groups of cells that flow into each other) in a flow direction raster. The new Validate Flow Direction tool identifies these cells. With the output from this tool, you can apply additional processing steps to resolve the ones that may cause erroneous outputs in workflows that use a flow direction raster

Generate breach lines

In the previous release of ArcGIS Pro, the Locate Depressions tool uses an input raster to identify potential culvert locations. ArcGIS Pro 3.7 adds two new tools to complete the workflow for incorporating culverts into hydrologic analysis.

The new Generate Breach Lines tool creates a 3D line that connects a depression to a lower elevation cell in the surface raster. By breaching the local impediment of water flow, the output from this tool represents the path for water to take through the culvert and continue its way downslope on the other side.

Adjust raster to stream

The Adjust Raster to Stream tool is the second new tool for the culvert workflow. This tool modifies the cell values of an input surface raster along the breach lines to allow water to flow through the culvert. You can instruct the tool to create a V-shaped channel of specific width or apply a selection of modification methods.

You can then use this output with the Derive Stream as Line tool to produce stream line features that accurately account for the culvert.

The new Generate Breach Lines and Adjust Raster to Stream tools are part of a workflow to account for culverts when modeling water flow. Learn more in this blog post:
Modeling What’s Hidden: Accounting for Culverts in High-Resolution DEMs

Improvements in basin and sink analysis

For the Basin and Sink tools, performance on the CPU was improved. In addition, GPU computation is now available with the addition of support for the GPU ID and Processor Type environments.

To improve the utility of the output from these tools, the IDs now always start from the upper left corner of the raster.

6. Multivariate analysis

Some optimizations were applied to the Band Collection Statistics tool for reading input data.

The Principal Components tool was re-engineered to improve performance. The output data file can now also be in .csv or markdown formats.

7. Overlay analysis

With the new Multicriteria Overlay tool, you can combine multiple rasters into a single output raster using a variety of methods. This tool gives you more options for multicriteria decision analysis than is possible with the traditional Weighted Overlay and Weighted Sum tools. These new methods offer overlay approaches needed for more specialized applications.

There are seven methods available in this release. For example, the Weighted Geometric Mean option is useful when higher values in one criteria cannot compensate for the lower values in others. Use the Maximum option when a single high value is sufficient to determine the result, and Minimum when a single low value is sufficient to disqualify a location. The Ideal Point Solutions (TOPSIS) option is useful when the criteria values are to be as close as possible to the most preferred values while at the same time being as far as possible from the least preferred values. See the tool help and the How the Multicriteria Overlay tool works topic to learn more about each of the options and what applications they are suited for.

Learn more in this blog post:
Combine rasters for spatial decision making with the new Multicriteria Overlay tool

8. Proximity analysis

The new Generate Weighted Voronoi tool offers a powerful new capability for proximity analysis. Standard Voronoi diagrams (also known as Thiessen polygons) divide the area covered by point data into zones where any location within the zone is closer to its associated input point than to any other input point. However, this requires an assumption that the input points are of equal weight, and so the resulting shapes are based only on geometry. With this new tool, you can now apply weights to the input points, and consequently generate results that incorporate influence (mass) rather than just geometry. Points with higher weights can push their influence further out than points with lower weights.

The tool offers a selection of relationships between distance and weight. In addition to an unweighted option (which produces a similar result as a typical Thiesen polygons), you can choose between additive, multiplicative, and power weighted relationships. You can also provide an expression that defines custom relationships. The output from the tool can be your choice of raster, feature, or both.

Learn more in this blog post:
Model spatial influence with weighted Voronoi

9. Surface analysis

This release introduces two new tools for surface analysis and includes improvements to three existing tools.

Surface area ratio

The new Surface Area Ratio tool calculates the ratio between the surface area and the planar area for each cell of a raster surface. It is a measure of variations in height of a surface at a small scale. The tool calculates the output values by dividing the 3D surface area by the planar area at each input cell location. You can choose between calculating two types of planar area, the horizontal planar area, and the arc-chord planar area. A common application of the result is in the ocean sciences to measure the complexity (rugosity) of the surface of the sea floor in bathymetric data.

Top hat transform

Use the new Top Hat Transform tool to extract spatial structures such as ridges or valleys from an elevation surface. The tool applies a top hat transform to create an output raster that records the height or depth of the structures. You can control the shape and size of the structures that the tool will detect by defining the neighborhood window.

Other improvements

For the Contour List tool, the new Contour Type parameter lets you choose whether the output contours will be lines or polygons.

The Interpolate Shape tool now preserves M-values in the output if they are present in the input data.

If the input surface raster has rectangular cells, the Surface Parameters tool defaults to the average value of the width and length for the Neighborhood distance parameter.

10. Zonal analysis

The Zonal Geometry tool was re-engineered to improve performance, scalability, and accuracy. When the Geometry Type parameter is set to the Area, Centroid, or Perimeter options, the tool now supports the Parallel Processing Factor environment for improved performance, particularly with larger input rasters.

In a future release, we will also apply these improvements to the Thickness option of the Zonal Geometry tool as well as the Zonal Geometry as Table tool.

11. Vertical unit support

In support of the rollout of the final National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) and NOAA's National Geodetic Survey (NGS), certain Spatial Analyst tools have an additional option for linear units in the vertical direction to help manage the transition from the legacy U.S. survey foot to the standard international foot.

For the Space Time Kernel Density tool, the Elevation Field Unit and Elevation Unit parameters have the new option US Foot.
In the Hydrology toolset, the Z Unit parameter in the Locate Depressions and Storage Capacity tools now include the US Foot option to define the linear unit for vertical z-values.
For the Surface toolset, the following tools also have US Foot as a new option for the Z Unit parameter: Aspect, Feature Preserving Smoothing, Geomorphon Landforms, Slope, and Surface Parameters. The new tool Surface Area Ratio tool also includes this option.

To learn more, see the following articles:

Change Is Afoot with the US Survey Foot (Spring 2023)
Prepare your data for the National Spatial Reference System modernization of 2022 in the U.S.
October 17th, 2023 (Updated April 23, 2026)

Summary

This is a big release from the Spatial Analyst team. It presents the largest number of new tools we've made available in a single release. There are also many other tools with new capabilities as well as improvements in performance and quality. Be sure to install it and try them out – we think you'll be happy!

Watch this space!

Several new blog posts that give more information on the new tools coming soon.

Follow resource learn about these updates as well as new technical content:

Spatial Analyst Resources at https://spatialanalyst-analysis-1.hub.arcgis.com/

Additional resources:

The original blog was first published in the ArcGIS Blog, and can be found here:

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/spatial-analyst/announcements/whats-new-for-spatial-analys...