Find all nearest points from a point.

[YamMagar]

I am working on two point datasets. First point feature that represents water body and second represents villages (household information on it). Based on crow-fly distance I  just want to estimate how many villages (eventually household) lives to the closest water body. Here, villages tend to go the closest water body than farthest one meaning that many villages can belong to one water body but one village can't be in two or more water body due to distance. I wonder what tool in ArcMap would accomplish this task or any scripting ideas ?

Thanks !

[JakeSkinner · Accepted solution]

Hi Yam,

Take a look at the Near tool, or possibly the Point Distance tool.

[IanMurray]

There have been quite a few people lately with the exact same question about doing this.  Near has been the answer everytime, wonder why this seems to be a consistent question from the community?

[JakeSkinner]

Hi Ian,

One reason may be that this tool is only licensed for ArcGIS for Desktop Advanced.  If the user is using Basic or Standard, they will not have access to this tool.

[YamMagar]

Yes, I didn't notice about  the Near tool unless I switch to different license level. I think this tool should work what I wanted to do. Otherwise I will post here again.

Thanks !

[OwenEarley]

ESRI should include the Near tool in all ArcGIS versions as it is such a common task.

I can see the point of having the more advanced editing and geodatabase design/modelling tools in Advanced versions of ArcGIS but I can't see why something as basic as the Near tool is not included in the basic license level.

[SepheFox]

Hey Yam, did this answer your question? If so, it would be great if you could mark your question as answered so people don't think you still need help. Thanks!