Summarize Data


These tools calculate total counts, lengths, areas, and basic descriptive statistics of features and their attributes within areas or near other features.

Aggregate Points

Aggregate Points

Using a layer of point features and a layer of area features, this tool determines which points fall within each area and calculates statistics about all the points within each area. For example:


Summarize Nearby

Summarize Nearby

Finds features that are within a specified distance of features in the input layer. Distance can be measured along straight lines or viable paths of a travel mode. Statistics are then calculated for the nearby features. For example:


Summarize Within

Summarize Within

Finds areas (and portions of areas) that overlap between two layers and calculates statistics about the overlap. For example:


Data Enrichment


These tools help you explore the character of areas. Detailed demographic data and statistics are returned for your chosen areas.

Enrich Layer

Enrich Layer

Retrieves information about the people, places, and businesses in a specific area, or within a selected travel time or distance from a location.


Find Locations


These tools are used to identify areas that meet a number of different criteria you specify. These criteria can be based upon attribute queries (for example, parcels that are vacant) and spatial queries (for example, within 1 kilometer of a river). The areas that are found can be selected from existing features (such as existing land parcels) or new features can be created where all the requirements are met.

Find Existing Locations

Find Existing Locations

Selects existing features in your study area that meet a series of criteria you specify. These criteria can be based on attribute queries (for example, parcels that are vacant) and spatial queries (for example, within 1 mile of a river).


Derive New Locations

Derive New Locations

Creates new features in your study area that meet a series of criteria you specify. These criteria can be based on attribute queries (for example, parcels that are vacant) and spatial queries (for example, within 1 mile of a river).


Find Similar Locations

Find Similar Locations

Finds the locations that are most similar to one or more reference locations based on criteria that you specify.


Choose Best Facilities

Choose Best Facilities

Choose the best locations for facilities by allocating locations that have demand for these facilities in a way that satisfies a given goal.


Create Viewshed

Create Viewshed

Creates areas that are visible based on locations you specify.


Create Watersheds

Create Watersheds

Creates catchment areas based on locations you specify.


Trace Downstream

Trace Downstream

Determine the flow paths in a downstream direction from the locations you specify.


Analyze Patterns


These tools help you identify, quantify, and visualize spatial patterns in your data.

Calculate Density

Calculate Density

Density analysis takes known quantities of some phenomenon and spreads these quantities across the map. You can use this tool, for example, to show concentrations of lightning strikes or tornadoes, access to health care facilities, and population densities.


Find Hot Spots

Find Hot Spots

This tool creates a map showing any statistically significant spatial clustering present in your data. Use this tool to uncover unexpected hot spots (red) and cold spots (blue) of high and low home values, crime densities, traffic accident fatalities, unemployment or biodiversity, for example.


Interpolate Points

Interpolate Points

This tool allows you to predict values at new locations based on measurements found in a collection of points. The tool takes point data with values at each point and returns areas classified by predicted values. You can use this tool, for example, to predict rainfall levels across a watershed based on measurements taken at individual rain gauges.


Use Proximity


These tools help you answer one of the most common questions posed in spatial analysis: "What is near what?"

Connect Origins to Destinations

Connect Origins to Destinations

Connect Origins to Destinations measures the travel time or distance between pairs of points. The tool can report straight-line distances, road distances, or travel times. Using this tool, you can

You provide starting and ending points, and the tool returns a layer containing route lines, including measurements, between the paired origins and destinations.


Create Buffers

Create Buffers

A buffer is an area that covers a given distance from a point, line, or area feature.

Buffers are typically used to create areas that can be further analyzed using other tools such as Overlay Layers. For example, if the question is "What buildings are within one mile of the school?", the answer can be found by creating a one-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 one mile of the school.


Create Drive-Time Areas

Create Drive-Time Areas

A drive-time area is the area that can be reached within a specified drive time or drive distance. Drive-time areas can help you answer questions such as:


Find Nearest

Find Nearest

Measures the cost of traveling between incidents and facilities and determines which are closer to the other. The result is a layer showing the best routes between incidents and facilities along with the travel cost (time and distance) of each route. For example, you can use this tool to find the closest hospital to an accident or the closest ATM to your current location.


Plan Routes

Plan Routes

You provide a set of stops and the number of vehicles available to visit the stops, and Plan Routes determines how to efficiently assign the stops to the vehicles and route the vehicles to the stops.

Use this tool to plan work for a mobile team of inspectors, appraisers, in-home support service providers, and others; deliver or pick up items from remote locations; or offer transportation services to people.


Manage Data


These tools are used for both the day-to-day management of geographic data and for combining data prior to analysis.

Dissolve Boundaries

Dissolve Boundaries

Areas that overlap or share a common boundary are merged together to form a single area.

You can control which boundaries are merged by specifying a field. For example, if you have a layer of counties, and each county has a State_Name attribute, you can dissolve boundaries using the State_Name attribute. Adjacent counties will be merged together if they have the same value for State_Name. The end result is a layer of state boundaries.


Extract Data

Extract Data

Creates a zip file, CSV, or KMZ of data from your layers and an area of interest that you specify.


Merge Layers

Merge Layers

Copies features from two or more existing layers into a new layer, for example:


Overlay Layers

Overlay Layers

Overlay combines two or more layers into one single layer. You can think of overlay as peering through a stack of maps and creating a single map containing all the information found in the stack, for example: