A route location describes a portion of a route or a single location along a route. When route locations are stored in tables, they are known as route event tables. Route event tables are typically organized around a common theme. For example, an event table for highways might include speed limits, year of resurfacing, present condition, and accidents.
There are two types of route events: point and line. Point events occur at precise locations along a route. Line events describe a portion of a route.
A route event table has at least two fields: a route identifier and one or two measure location fields. The route identifier indicates what the route event is located along. The measure location is either one or two values that describe the positions on the route where the event occurs.
The process of computing the map location of events stored in an event table is known as dynamic segmentation.
The result of the dynamic segmentation process is a route event source, which can be used by a layer in a map.
The Make Route Event Layer geoprocessing tool can be used in ArcCatalog or ArcMap. The result is a temporary layer that can be used in other geoprocessing operations. Once created, this layer is available in the tool drop-down menus. If using ArcMap, the layer appears in the table of contents.
Learn more about temporary layers