Determine the shortest Polyline from a cluster of points?

[PeterWilson]

I'm currently busy with setting up a Household Income Survey for a project that we have in Dar es Salaam. I have created clusters of house locations with the help of Curtis Price based on the following post https://community.esri.com/thread/195972-how-to-group-points-into-optimal-clusters-proximity-and-tim... My next challenge is that I'd like to create an optimal path for each cluster by creating the shortest path between each point for each cluster so that the shortest path is depicted for the surveyors to take to eliminate time wasted and the possibility of not completing any of the household surveys..

What approach or methodology could I follow to create the shortest polyline joining the points for each cluster separately that would depict the best path to take to complete the Household Income survey for each cluster separately. We have allocated 24 devices to 24 surveyors that will carry out the survey for each cluster over a period of eight days.

Study Area: 24 Clusters

Study Area Group1: Optimal Path Example

[DanPatterson_Retired · Accepted solution]

Near Table followed by Xy to line but the optimal solution would be

Minimum spanning tree or MST for Pro you may have to do the groups separately for the last

[PeterWilson]

Hi Dan, 

Thanks for the following, worked like a charm.

MST - Minimum Spanning Tree

Peano Curve - Space-Filling Curve

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Looks nice! good example

[JayantaPoddar]

You may start with Mean Center—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop using the CASE Field parameter. This would give you the mean center for each cluster/group.

Then execute Points To Line—Help | ArcGIS Desktop 

[curtvprice]

Just a thought. This is not an easy geographic problem. One thing to keep in mind is that unless you have really good road data (and road quality data, for example, are the roads passable?) your sophisticated GIS analysis may not be worth the effort. It is possible your time may be best spent making sure the surveyors have good base maps so they can make good decisions on the ground, for example they may plan to go somewhere and find the way blocked, if so if they have good base mapping they can make a better decision on how to get around it.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Peter... Spanning tree... or network analyst... how accurate do you need to determine the time or is it just relative connection you need... that is the difference.