GeoAnalytics Tools service tasks

Aggregate Points

This tool works with a layer of point features and a layer of areas features. Input area features can be from a polygon layer or they can be square or hexagonal bins calculated when the tool is run. The tool first determines which points fall within each specified area. After determining this point-in-area spatial relationship, statistics about all points in the area are calculated and assigned to the area. The most basic statistic is the count of the number of points within the area, but you can get other statistics as well.

Build Multi-Variable Grid

This tool generates a grid of square or hexagonal bins and calculates variables for each bin based on the proximity of one or more input layers.

Describe Dataset

This tool provides an overview of your big data. By default, the tool outputs a table layer containing calculated field statistics and a JSON string outlining geometry and time settings for the input layer.

Join Features

This tool works with two layers. Join Features joins attributes from one feature to another based on spatial, temporal, and attribute relationships or some combination of the three. The tool determines all input features that meet the specified join conditions and joins the second input layer to the first. You can optionally join all features to the matching features or summarize the matching features.

Reconstruct Tracks

This tool works with a time-enabled layer of either point or area features that represent an instant in time. It first determines which features belong to a track using an identifier. Using the time at each location, the tracks are ordered sequentially and transformed into a line or area representing the path of movement over time. Optionally, the input can be buffered by a field, which will create an area at each location. These buffered points, or input areas, are then joined sequentially to create a track as an area where the width is representative of the attribute of interest. Resulting tracks have a start and end time, which represent temporally the first and last feature in a given track. When the tracks are created, statistics about the input features are calculated and assigned to the output track. The most basic statistic is the count of points within the area, but other statistics can be calculated as well.

Summarize Attributes

This tool takes an input layer and summarizes and calculates statistics on like values. The most basic statistic is the count of the number of features with a specified value, but you can get other statistics as well.

Summarize Center and Dispersion

This tool finds central features and directional distributions. It can be used to answer questions such as the following:

• Where is the center?
• Which feature is the most accessible from all other features?
• How dispersed, compact, or integrated are the features?
• Are there directional trends?

Summarize Within

This tool task finds features (and portions of features) that are within the boundaries of areas in the first input layer. The following are examples:

• Given a layer of watershed boundaries and a layer of land-use boundaries, calculate the total acreage of land-use type for each watershed.
• Given a layer of parcels in a county and a layer of city boundaries, summarize the average value of vacant parcels within each city boundary.
• Given a layer of counties and a layer of roads, summarize the total mileage of roads by road type within each county.

Detect Incidents

This tool task works with a time-enabled layer of points, lines, areas, or tables that represents an instant in time. Using sequentially ordered features, called tracks, this tool determines which features are incidents of interest. Incidents are determined by conditions that you specify. First, the tool determines which features belong to a track using one or more fields. Using the time at each feature, the tracks are ordered sequentially and the incident condition is applied. Features that meet the starting incident condition are marked as an incident. You can optionally apply an ending incident condition; when the end condition is true, the feature is no longer an incident. The results will be returned with the original features with new columns representing the incident name and indicate which feature meets the incident condition. You can return all original features, only the features that are incidents, or all of the features within tracks where at least one incident occurred.

Geocode Locations

This tool geocodes a table from a big data file share. The task uses a geocode utility service configured with your portal. If you do not have a geocode utility service configured, talk to your administrator. Learn more about configuring a locator service.

Find Dwell Locations

This tool works with time-enabled points of type instant to find where points dwell within a specific distance and duration.

Find Similar Locations

This tool measures the similarity of candidate locations to one or more reference locations.

Calculate Density

This tool creates a density map from point features by spreading known quantities of some phenomenon (represented as attributes of the points) across the map. The result is a layer of areas classified from least dense to most dense.

Create Space Time Cube

This tool works with a layer of point features that are time enabled. It aggregates the data into a three-dimensional cube of space-time bins. When determining the point in a space-time bin relationship, statistics about all points in the space-time bins are calculated and assigned to the bins. The most basic statistic is the number of points within the bins, but you can calculate other statistics as well.

Find Hot Spots

This tool analyzes point data (such as crime incidents, traffic accidents, trees, and so on) or field values associated with points. It finds statistically significant spatial clusters of high incidents (hot spots) and low incidents (cold spots). Hot spots are locations with lots of points and cold spots are locations with very few points.

Find Point Clusters

This tool finds clusters of point features within surrounding noise based on their spatial or spatiotemporal distribution.

Forest-Based Classification And Regression

This tool creates models and generates predictions using an adaptation of Leo Breiman's random forest algorithm, which is a supervised machine learning method. Predictions can be performed for both categorical variables (classification) and continuous variables (regression). Explanatory variables can take the form of fields in the attribute table of the training features. In addition to validation of model performance based on the training data, predictions can be made to another feature dataset.

Generalized Linear Regression

This tool performs Generalized Linear Regression (GLR) to generate predictions or to model a dependent variable's relationship to a set of explanatory variables. This tool can be used to fit continuous (Gaussian and OLS), binary (logistic), and count (Poisson) models.

Geographically Weighted Regression

This tool performs GeographicallyWeightedRegression (GWR), which is a local form of linear regression used to model spatially varying relationships.

Create Buffers

Buffers are typically used to create areas that can be further analyzed using other tools. For example, if the question is what buildings are within 1 mile of the school, the answer can be found by creating a 1-mile buffer around the school and overlaying the buffer with the layer containing building footprints. The end result is a layer of those buildings within 1 mile of the school.

Group By Proximity

This tool groups features that are within spatial or spatiotemporal proximity of each other.

Snap Tracks

This tool matches track points to polylines and requires the following input layers:

• pointLayer —The input point layer must be time-enabled observations that represent an instant in time. Track observations that do not have a valid time stamp will be excluded from analysis.
• polylineLayer —The input polyline layer must contain fields with the following connectivity information and must be specified in the connectivityFieldMatching parameter:
• polylineID —The unique identifier for the polyline
• fromNodeID —The node where a polyline begins
• toNodeID —The node where a polyline ends From nodes and to nodes indicate how each polyline is connected, and how they can be traversed by the input points.

Trace Proximity Events

This tool analyzes time-enabled point features representing moving entities. The task will follow entities of interest in space (location) and time to see which other entities the entities of interest have interacted with. The trace will continue from entity to entity to a configurable maximum degrees of separation from the original entity of interest.

Calculate Motion Statistics

This tool calculates motion statistics and descriptors for time-enabled points that represent one or more moving entities. Points are grouped together into tracks representing each entity using a unique identifier. Motion statistics are calculated at each point using one or more points in the track history. Calculations include summaries of distance traveled, duration, elevation, speed, acceleration, bearing, and idle status. The result is a new point layer enriched with the requested statistics.

Enrich From Multi-Variable Grid

This tool joins attributes from a multivariable grid to a point layer. The multivariable grid must be created using the BuildMultiVariableGrid task. Metadata from the multivariable grid is used to efficiently enrich the input point features, making it faster than the Join Features task. Attributes in the multivariable grid are joined to the input point features when the features intersect the grid.

Append Data

This tool appends data to an existing hosted feature layer. Append Data modifies the original input layer and does not generate a new output layer. You can match fields based on the field name and field type, or you can apply more advanced matching methods.

Calculate Field

This tool works with a layer to create and populate a new field or edit and existing field. The output is a new feature service that is the same as the input features, with the newly calculated values.

Clip Layer

This tool extracts input point, line, or polygon features that overlay the clip areas. The output is a subset of your input data based on the areas of interest.

Copy to Data Store

This tool takes an input layer and copies it to a data store. Data is copied to ArcGIS Data Store, configured as either a relational or spatiotemporal big data store.

Dissolve Boundaries

This tool finds polygons that intersect or have the same field values and merges them to form a single polygon.

Merge Layers

This tool combines two feature layers to create a single output layer.

Overlay Layers

This tool combines two or more layers into one layer. You can think of overlay as peering through a stack of maps and creating a single map containing all the information in the stack. Overlay is more than a merging of line work; all the attributes of the features in the overlay are included in the final product. Overlay Layers is used to answer one of the most basic questions of geography: What is on top of what?