Available with Spatial Analyst license.
With the ArcGIS Spatial Analyst in ArcGIS, you can perform spatial analysis on your data. You can provide answers to simple spatial questions such as How steep is it at this location? and What direction is this location facing? You can also find answers to more complex spatial questions such as Where is the best location for a new facility? and What is the least costly path from A to B? The comprehensive set of Spatial Analyst tools within ArcGIS allows you to explore and analyze your spatial data and enables you to find solutions to your spatial problems. You can run tools from the Spatial Analyst toolbox or the Python Window, accessible via any ArcGIS Desktop application. You can also create your own custom tools (models or scripts) to run a sequence of tools at one time.
Tutorial Scenario
The town of Stowe, Vermont, USA, has experienced a substantial increase in population. Demographic data suggests this increase has occurred because of families with children moving to the region, taking advantage of the many recreational facilities located nearby. It has been decided that a new school must be built to take the strain off the existing schools, and as a town planner, you have been assigned the task of finding the potential site.
This tutorial will show you how to use many of the available tools and will give you a solid basis from which you can start to think about how to solve your own specific spatial problems.
It is assumed that you have installed ArcGIS Desktop (Desktop Basic, Desktop Standard, or Desktop Advanced) and the ArcGIS Spatial Analyst before you begin this tutorial. If you need more information about extensions, see Using Extensions in ArcGIS.
The data required is included on the ArcGIS Desktop DVD. After running the ArcGIS setup, on the Additional Installation Components dialog box, check to install the ArcGIS Tutorial Data. On the ArcGIS Tutorial Data Setup wizard, check to install the Spatial Analyst data (the default installation path is C:\arcgis\ArcTutor\SpatialAnalyst). The datasets were provided courtesy of the state of Vermont for use in this tutorial. The tutorial scenario is fictitious, and the original data has been adapted for the tutorial.
| Dataset | Description |
|---|---|
Elevation | Raster dataset representing the elevation of the area |
Landuse | Raster dataset representing the land-use types over the area |
Roads | Feature class representing the linear road network for the town of Stowe |
Rec_sites | Feature class representing point locations of recreation sites |
Schools | Feature class representing point locations of existing schools |
Destination | Feature class representing the destination point used when finding the best route for a new road |
This tutorial is divided into exercises and is designed to allow you to explore Spatial Analyst functionality in ArcGIS at your own pace.
- In Exercise 1, you'll prepare for analysis. You'll copy the tutorial data locally and create a geodatabase to hold your results.
- In Exercise 2, you'll learn the location of the Spatial Analyst tools, create a hillshade output, and explore your data.
- In Exercise 3, you'll create a suitability map to help you find the best location for a new school. You'll derive datasets of distance and slope, reclassify datasets to a common scale, then weight those that are more important to consider and combine them to find the most suitable locations. You'll then locate the optimal site using the selection tools within ArcMap.
- In Exercise 4, you'll find the least costly route for an alternate access road to the new school site.
You will need approximately 90 minutes of focused time to complete the tutorial. Alternatively, you can perform the exercises in sequence one at a time, saving your results along the way when recommended.