Basic Spatial Analysis

Spatial analysis allows you to solve complex location-oriented problems and better understand where and what is occurring in your world. It goes beyond mere mapping to let you study the characteristics of places and the relationships between them. Spatial analysis lends new perspectives to your decision making.

Have you ever looked at a map of crime in your city and tried to figure out what areas have high crime rates? Have you explored other types of information, such as school locations, parks, and demographics to try to determine the best location to buy a new home? Whenever we look at a map, we inherently start turning that map into information by analyzing its contents—finding patterns, assessing trends, or making decisions. This process is called spatial analysis, and it’s what our eyes and minds do naturally whenever we look at a map.

In this session, we will cover the following:

Extraction Tools - what is a (geographic) subset of features?

Spatial Query

Clip

Overlay Tools – what is on top of what?

Intersect

Union

Proximity Tools – how near or far are features?

Buffer

Quantifying Nearness

Near tool

Point Distance

Getting the software

Option A) If you have ArcGIS Pro installed on your local machine, you are all set (instructions for downloading and installing ArcGIS Pro on your machine are here)

OPTION B) If you are using Virtual Access through My Clemson Apps, copy the downloaded folder to your Documents folder.

OPTION C) If you are using Virtual Desktop, you can access your Downloads folder by going to C:\Users\"your Clemson username"\Downloads

Getting the workshop materials

Click here to download the workshop material.

Copy and paste the workshop material to your Documents directory. After you downloaded the workshop material, follow the steps below to unzip the file: