We currently have a corridor network based on the the existing configuration of protected areas and would like to compare this corridor network with the random protected areas configurations.
Is this possible? This is currently outside my expertise (but willing to learn) and am looking for direction/terms/concepts/etc. I should be aware of to get me started.
Thanks,
Mike
Feature Shifting: I don't think there is an out of the box way to do this, although you could use a "false easting" and "false northing" in a custom projection file to do this. Also, I have seen scripts posted on the forum that shift features by a systematic offset (but can't seem to locate them right now). The basic idea is to read through all the feature geometry and then write out some new features where all the vertices have a shift in their x/y coordinates (say like 20 feet to the north, 37 feet to the east).
Feature Rotating: Again, I don't think there is an out of the box tool to do this (other than the rotate tool available via an edit session). You could write some Python code to do this... although the math for doing that is above my immediate geometry skills for sure... There is a toolbox tool for rotating rasters: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00170000007s000000 and I think there is some ArcObjects-type methods for handling vector rotation (like the edit sesion tool). This might be kind of hard in Python - and maybe better for ArcObjects if indeed there is already a method to do feature rotation there.
So I assume this is some sort of monte carlo optimization you are trying to devise? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method
I built a version of a monte carlo-based "optimizer" for estimating the number of animal territories (northern spotted owls) that could be supported given different scenarios about forest conditions over time. Basically (like what you are trying to do), it just tries a bunch of random permutations and builds up distribution of the results. It doesn't really seek to optimize anything exactly, but rather it generates a distribution of "likely outcomes". Some outcomes of course ended up with more territories than others - I guess you could think of more territories as being an optimization, although that's not what the project was really about. In retrospect, it was a pain and took me a long time to program, but in the end it was pretty cool and I learned a lot from doing it.
That said, I don't think you would be able to effectively do this kind of thing without knowing how to program. As far as I know, there are no "out of the box" tools for this sort of spatial optimization. Network Analyst is really a tabular optimization (although there is a spatial component sort of) and uses this sort of method I think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming