{"id":185131,"date":"2013-12-17T22:42:40","date_gmt":"2013-12-17T22:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=185131"},"modified":"2018-12-18T11:26:47","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T19:26:47","slug":"more-adventures-in-overlay-point-in-polygon","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-desktop\/analytics\/more-adventures-in-overlay-point-in-polygon","title":{"rendered":"More adventures in overlay: point in polygon"},"author":3991,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":""},"categories":[23341],"tags":[28481,43741,23391],"industry":[],"product":[36991],"class_list":["post-185131","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analytics","tag-overlay","tag-proximity","tag-spatial-analytics","product-arcgis-desktop"],"acf":{"short_description":"Counting the number of points in a polygon is a  common overlay operation. But unless you\u2019re aware of what happens when points fall on polygon","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p>Counting the number of points in a polygon is a\u00a0 common overlay operation. But unless you\u2019re aware of what happens when points fall on polygon boundaries, or when points fall just outside the coverage of your polygons, you may not be getting the results you expect.<span id=\"more-33611\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_graduated_symbols.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-33613 noIMGBackground alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_graduated_symbols.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"372\" height=\"262\" \/><\/a>Here\u2019s the scenario:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I have polygons representing some administrative districts.<\/li>\n<li>And I have some points representing households.\u00a0 Each household has an attribute HHSize which is the number of people in the household.<\/li>\n<li>I want to count the number of households and the total size of the household in each polygon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The map to the left shows the household points with graduated symbols based on HHSIZE.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_spatial_join_dialog.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-33621 noIMGBackground alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_spatial_join_dialog.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"338\" height=\"491\" \/><\/a>There are lots of ways to perform the overlay to get the number of households and the sum of household size. For now, let\u2019s look at what I would describe as the \u201cstandard method\u201d:\u00a0<a title=\"Spatial Join\" href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Spatial_Join\/00080000000q000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spatial Join<\/a>, shown to the right.\u00a0 The\u00a0<strong>Target Features<\/strong>are the polygons (Districts) and the\u00a0<strong>Join Features<\/strong>\u00a0are the points (Households).\u00a0 Since I want the sum of HHSize, I right-click the HHSize field in the\u00a0<strong>Field Map<\/strong>\u00a0and choose\u00a0<strong>Sum<\/strong>\u00a0as the\u00a0<strong>Merge Rule<\/strong>. \u00a0The\u00a0<strong>Match Option<\/strong>\u00a0is INTERSECT.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The figure below shows the output of Spatial Join, the Districts_SpatialJoin feature class, symbolized by the sum of HHSize, and its table with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Viewing_statistics_for_a_table\/005s00000057000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">statistics<\/a>\u00a0about the Join_Count field (the number of points found in the polygon) and the HHSize field (the sum of all HHSize values for the polygon). These statistics tell us that 327 points were overlaid and the sum of HHSize for all polygons is 1621.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_spatial_join_counts.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-33618 noIMGBackground aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_spatial_join_counts.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"572\" height=\"275\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_original_counts1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-33620 noIMGBackground\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_original_counts1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"419\" height=\"302\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Now let\u2019s go back to the Households table and get some statistics.\u00a0 There are 340 points with a HHSize total of 1670.<\/p>\n<p>Huh?\u00a0 Out of the original 340 points, only 327 were found to intersect the polygons.\u00a0 The HHSize sums are off as well; instead of 1670, there\u2019s 1621.\u00a0 Why the difference?<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_characterized_points.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-33633 noIMGBackground\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_characterized_points.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"496\" height=\"318\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The issue is that some points are ambiguous; some\u00a0 fall outside the coverage of the polygons and some\u00a0 fall exactly on polygon boundaries, as shown on the map to the left.\u00a0 The red triangles show points that fall outside the coverage of the polygons and do not overlay any of the polygons. So they don\u2019t get counted at all. More interesting are the blue asterisks that show points that fall exactly on a polygon boundary.\u00a0 When a point falls exactly on a polygon boundary, it gets overlaid with each polygon that shares the boundary.\u00a0 In the figure, point A overlays two districts and gets counted twice, once in district 5 and once in district 6.\u00a0 Point B overlays districts 2, 4, and 5 and gets counted thrice.\u00a0 Point C, although on a border, gets counted only once since it falls on an exterior boundary.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Finding boundary points<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_get_boundary_points.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-33636 noIMGBackground\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_get_boundary_points.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"328\" height=\"304\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To find boundary points, use the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Using_Select_By_Location\/00s50000002q000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Select By Location<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0tool found in the\u00a0<strong>Selection<\/strong>\u00a0menu of ArcMap.\u00a0 The\u00a0<strong>Target layer<\/strong>\u00a0is the point layer (Households) and the<strong>\u00a0Source layer<\/strong>\u00a0is the polygon layer (Districts).\u00a0 The\u00a0<strong>Spatial selection method<\/strong>\u00a0is \u201c<strong>touch the boundary of the source layer feature<\/strong>\u201c.<\/p>\n<p>The result is a selection of points that fall exactly on the boundary of a polygon.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Finding points outside<\/h3>\n<p>To find points that fall outside the coverage of the polygons, use\u00a0<strong>Select By Location<\/strong>\u00a0with the same inputs as above (be sure to clear any selections beforehand), but choose \u201c<strong>are within the source layer feature<\/strong>\u201d for the\u00a0<strong>Spatial Selection method<\/strong>.\u00a0 This selects all points that are covered by the polygons.\u00a0 Next, right click the point layer (Households), and click\u00a0<strong>Selection &gt; Switch Selection<\/strong>. The result is a selection of points that fall outside the coverage of the polygons.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_get_outside_points.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33640 noIMGBackground\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/pip_get_outside_points.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"587\" height=\"307\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you have any ambiguous points (border points or outside points), you need to determine what to do with them before doing any point-in-polygon analysis.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Are the outside points truly outside? In this example, the outside points are just a few meters away from a polygon boundary, and I want them to overlay the closest polygon.\u00a0 For your data, you\u2019ll have to decide based on your data resolution and quality whether outside points should overlay a polygon.<\/li>\n<li>For boundary points, do you care which polygon they overlay?\u00a0 For some analyses, you may want the point to overlay each polygon that shares a boundary (because, technically, the point does belong in each polygon).\u00a0 Or you just don\u2019t care \u2014 just have the software randomly assign the point to one (and only one) of the shared polygons.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>You could, of course, edit the points and move them inside the polygon to which they belong, but this requires you have more information than just the location of the point, which means you may have some attribute about each point that tells you what polygon the point should overlay.\u00a0 And if you have this information, you may not have to do an overlay; you\u2019d use the attribute in something like\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Summary_Statistics\/00080000001z000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Summary Statistics<\/a>\u00a0to calculate totals for each polygon.\u00a0 If your points are the result of geocoding addresses, see the section at the end of this post; it may be that you need to geocode your addresses again using a side offset.<\/p>\n<p>So, if editing and moving the points isn\u2019t an option (either because there\u2019s too many or there\u2019s no other information), you need something other than the \u201cstandard method\u201d of using Spatial Join shown above. My favorite is\u2026<\/p>\n<h2>Use proximity, not overlay<\/h2>\n<p>In may seem counter-intuitive, but instead of using an overlay function to do point-in-polygon analysis, use a proximity function.<\/p>\n<p>In ArcGIS, the proximity tools (such as\u00a0<a title=\"Near\" href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Near\/00080000001q000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Near<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a title=\"Generate Near Table\" href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Generate_Near_Table\/00080000001n000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Generate Near Table<\/a>) have a unique (but not unexpected) behavior: when two or more nearby features are equal-distant from the target feature, one of the nearby features is chosen at random.\u00a0 When a point falls on a polygon boundary, it is equidistant from all bounding polygons.\u00a0 That means that one of the bounding polygons is chosen at random to be the closest polygon, and over-counting is eliminated.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a model that does point-in-polygon analysis using the Near tool.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/model_near_sumstats.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33749 noIMGBackground\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/model_near_sumstats.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"135\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Below are details about each tool in the model.<\/p>\n<h3><a title=\"Near\" href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Near\/00080000001q000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Near<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/model_near_dialog.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33753 noIMGBackground\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/model_near_dialog.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"167\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Input Features<\/strong>\u00a0is Households (points).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Near Features<\/strong>\u00a0is Districts (polygons).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Search Radius<\/strong>\u00a0is 10 meters (or whatever is appropriate to capture the outside points).\u00a0<em>\u00a0If you only want to deal with boundary points and disregard any outside points, set the Search Radius to 0 (zero).<\/em><\/li>\n<li>The output is Households with NEAR_FID and NEAR_DIST. NEAR_FID is the OBJECTID of the closest polygon and NEAR_DIST is the distance in the units of the input point features. For points inside or on polygon boundaries, NEAR_DIST is zero. For points on boundaries, one of the nearest polygons is selected at random.\u00a0 If no polygon is found, NEAR_FID and NEAR_DIST are -1.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><a title=\"Summary Statistics\" href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Summary_Statistics\/00080000001z000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Summary Statistics<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/model_sumstats_dialog.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33754 noIMGBackground\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/esri\/arcgis\/files\/2013\/12\/model_sumstats_dialog.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"583\" height=\"248\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Input Table<\/strong>\u00a0is the output of Near.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Statistics Field<\/strong>\u00a0is HHSize with a Statistics Type of SUM.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Case field<\/strong>\u00a0is NEAR_FID<\/li>\n<li>The output is a table with one row for each unique value of NEAR_FID. Because NEAR_FID is the OBJECTID of the polygons, the output has one row for each input polygon (unless there\u2019s a polygon that is not near any of the points). The output also contains SUM_HHSize, the sum of all HHSize values for each unique NEAR_FID. The output also contains a FREQUENCY field, which is the number of records for each unique\u00a0<strong>Case field<\/strong>, which is the number of points in each polygon. The statistics are correct as well; the sum of FREQUENCY is the total number of points (340) and SUM_HHSize is correct (1670).<\/li>\n<li><em>Hint<\/em>: If all you need is a count of points, set the\u00a0<strong>Statistics Field<\/strong>\u00a0to OBJECTID and the Statistics Type to COUNT, and set the\u00a0<strong>Case Field<\/strong>to NEAR_FID.\u00a0 The output table will contain COUNT_OBJECTID and FREQUENCY<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><a title=\"Join Field\" href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Join_Field\/001700000065000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Join Field<\/a><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>This step is optional; the output table of Summary Statistics is permanently joined back to the input polygons (Districts). For\u00a0 your project, it may be that that all you need is the output statistics table.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Input Table<\/strong>\u00a0is Districts<\/li>\n<li><strong>Input Join Field<\/strong>\u00a0is OBJECTID<\/li>\n<li><strong>Join Table<\/strong>\u00a0is Near Statistics (the output of Summary Statistics)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Output Join Field<\/strong>\u00a0is NEAR_FID<\/li>\n<li><strong>Join Fields<\/strong>\u00a0are FREQUENCY and SUM_HHSize<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Address Matching<\/h2>\n<p>Points that fall on polygon boundaries are usually the result of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/What_is_geocoding\/002500000001000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">geocoding<\/a>\u00a0addresses to street centerlines that also form polygon boundaries (in the example above, the Districts feature class uses streets centerlines as polygon boundaries).\u00a0\u00a0 If a side offset is not specified when geocoding addresses, the geocoded points will fall exactly on the street centerlines and, by association, the polygon boundaries.\u00a0 So, to avoid an ambiguous points situation, you\u2019ll want to specify a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Geocoding_options\/002500000048000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">side offset<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Essential_geocoding_vocabulary\/002500000004000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">address locator<\/a>\u00a0you use for geocoding.\u00a0 An offset of just a few feet or meters is all you need to avoid ambiguity.<\/p>\n<h2>Best Practices<\/h2>\n<p>To wrap this up, if you\u2019re doing a point-in-polygon analysis, you need to investigate your data before performing the analysis:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use the\u00a0<strong>Select By Location<\/strong>\u00a0tool in ArcMap as shown above to determine if you have any ambiguous points (points outside or on boundaries).<\/li>\n<li>If you don\u2019t have any ambiguous points, you can use the \u201cstandard method\u201d of Spatial Join.<\/li>\n<li>If you have ambiguous points, you can use the proximity method shown in the above model.\u00a0 If you have outside points that you want to include, use an appropriate non-zero\u00a0<strong>Search Radius<\/strong>\u00a0in the Near tool.\u00a0 If you only want to include boundary points (no outside points), use a\u00a0<strong>Search Radius<\/strong>\u00a0of 0 (zero).<\/li>\n<li>Check your results by examining your input and output data using the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/resources.arcgis.com\/en\/help\/main\/10.2\/index.html#\/Viewing_statistics_for_a_table\/005s00000057000000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">statistics<\/a>\u00a0 tool available when viewing tables in ArcMap.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n"}],"authors":[{"ID":3991,"user_firstname":"Dale","user_lastname":"Honeycutt","nickname":"dmhoneycutt","user_nicename":"dmhoneycutt","display_name":"Dale Honeycutt","user_email":"dhoneycutt@esri.com","user_url":"","user_registered":"2018-03-02 00:15:37","user_description":"","user_avatar":"<img alt='' src='https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5431fd1559b9dcbc86438ecb083710d6710a1a74625018e6378d57ab2d6149fe?s=96&#038;d=blank&#038;r=g' srcset='https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5431fd1559b9dcbc86438ecb083710d6710a1a74625018e6378d57ab2d6149fe?s=192&#038;d=blank&#038;r=g 2x' class='avatar avatar-96 photo' height='96' width='96' loading='lazy' decoding='async'\/>"}],"related_articles":"","card_image":false,"wide_image":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>More adventures in overlay: point in polygon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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