Bringing Attributes from One Roadway to Another: Transfer Attributes (Conflation Toolset)

[CharleneMingus]

I need to bring the attribute information from a DOT roadway shapefile (which has most of the needed attribute data) over to the NAVTEQ roadway shapefile (which is spatially more accurate and has more accurate connectivity). The roadways are slightly different spatially but when the DOT shapefile is buffered by 25 feet almost all the corresponding NAVTEQ roadways fall within that range. The two roadways do not have a  matching field to assist with joining (one lacks road names). I tried bringing the DOT attributes over to NAVTEQ using the Transfer Attributes tool (http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.2/index.html#//001v0000000s000000) which is part of the Conflation Toolset, however, the process did not work even with multiple adjustments including a variety of distances. The target feature (NAVTEQ) brings in the DOT roadway attribute fields but all of the values are null and the Output Matching Table is blank. I also couldn't get the Generate Rubbersheeting Link tool to work. Do you have any ideas of what the problem may be? Is there another tool or method that you would recommend that I pursue?

[RichardFairhurst]

A screen shot of a sample area would help.  Do all sources share the same coordinate system?  Did you try the tools with geodatabase feature class versions of your data as opposed to shapefiles?  How many lines are in each file for your area of interest?  Did you attempt a smal scale test to determine if the tool works for even a small set of lines from these two sources (100 lines or fewer in each input source)?

[CharleneMingus]

Here's a screen shot of a sample area (1:3,000).

The two roadways are file geodatabase feature class and are both in GCS_North_American_1983.

I'm currently running a test on a smaller geographic area and I'll report back.

The image below is my entire study area, which is approximately 190 square miles.

[RichardFairhurst]

Just to be clear, which lines in your example screen shot are considered more accurate?  The brown lines or the black lines?

[CharleneMingus]

The brown/red lines are spatially more accurate than the black lines. Here's another example.

[NobbirAhmed]

Hi Charlene, Download the content from this link - it contains some supplemental tools along with documentation on how to use them along with the system tools found in conflation toolset.

http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=36961cde1b074f1f944758f6abec87cc

[RichardFairhurst]

At 10.3 the Data Management Tools - Data Comparison toolset - Detect Feature Changes tool only identifies changes in shape based on a specified tolerance and will match two lines that are pointing in opposite directions without flagging any difference in the lines.  At 10.4 the Detect Feature Changes tool adds an option to flag lines that are pointing in opposite directions, even when they are the same in all other respects. This is a very useful option for conflating line networks that contain attributes that are dependent on the line orientation, such as address ranges, line end elevations and any other attributes associated with a specific side or end of the line.  The new line direction option of this tool makes it very easy to integrate the Flip Line tool into the Conflation workflow to resolve all line orientation conflicts between two networks in a single step.