Get lat/long data from building centroid list or feature layer

[CarolynKnight]

I have a survey that does not include a visual map because often the surveys are done inside buildings with poor reception. One initial question in the survey is to identify the building the survey is in. I'd like to get the lat/long data from existing building centroid information. This can be a from a lookup list with building names, lat and long columns, or from a hosted feature layer. Is it possible to auto-populate lat/longs from the building selection?

[AdrianWelsh]

Carolyn, I believe this document should walk you through to exactly what you need to do:

https://support.esri.com/en/technical-article/000021849

I hope this helps!

[CarolynKnight]

Thank you for pointing me to that article. However, I do have the centroids of my features. I'm trying to figure out how to make all my survey point use those centroid locations.

[AdrianWelsh]

I am not entirely sure on what you are asking. By having your survey points use the centroids, what do you need exactly? Do you need the centroids to have x and y attributes that give the lat and long? If so, performing the Add XY tool can do that:

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/data-management/add-xy-coordinates.htm

[CarolynKnight]

How do I get my Survey123 survey to use building centroids to map the location of each survey?

Survey123 automatically generates a location based on the hardware GPS capabilities. This is not accurate at all for my needs. Instead, I want the Survey123 survey to use a building centroid based on the building that is selected when conducting a survey.

I have building polygons, and I have X, and Y centroid locations. I just don't know how to make the Survey123 survey use that information.

[AdrianWelsh]

Wow, it didn't even dawn on me that we were in the Survey123 forum. This makes way more sense now (I totally thought I was in the ArcGIS Pro forum... whoops!). 

That is a tall order and one that I am not sure can be accomplished with Survey123. I would rely on @Anonymous User or @JamesTedrick to answer a complex question like that.

For me personally, I would have to do this in two steps. One, take the survey and throw those survey points into ArcGIS Pro. Two, I would do an operation like Spatial Join with a large enough tolerance (like "within a distance" of 30 feet) to join the building centroids to the survey points. Hopefully the buildings are spaced out enough to grab these spatial survey points, but that is how I would accomplish this.

[CarolynKnight]

Thanks for your response, and I appreciate your insight! I can simply join based on the building names so your suggestion would be pretty easy.

[AdrianWelsh]

Well heck, that is way easier! Tabular joins would work way better than relying on GPS locations!