"},{"ID":7091,"user_firstname":"Sarmistha","user_lastname":"Chatterjee","nickname":"Sarmistha Chatterjee","user_nicename":"schatterjee17","display_name":"Sarmistha Chatterjee","user_email":"SChatterjee@esri.com","user_url":"","user_registered":"2018-03-02 00:19:17","user_description":"Sarmistha is a Product Engineer in Esri's raster analysis group, where she focuses on raster and scientific multidimensional data analysis. She is especially interested in combining GIS technology, spatial analysis, and software engineering to study changes for conservation and better decision-making. Before joining Esri in 2017, Sarmistha earned her PhD in Geography from the University of Delaware, where she researched fluvial geomorphology, water resources, and spatial modeling.","user_avatar":"
"}],"short_description":"Highlights of the new and improved capabilities for raster analysis introduced in 2025 for ArcGIS Spatial Analyst functionalities.","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"The Spatial Analyst team worked hard for you in 2025. This blog covers the new capabilities as well as improvements in functionality and performance.<\/p>\n
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The ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension provides a broad range of powerful spatial modeling and raster analysis capabilities.<\/p>\n
Listed here are some of the major improvements and innovations in Spatial Analyst functionalities across the ArcGIS suite of software this year:<\/p>\n
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For the Suitability Modeler<\/a> in ArcGIS Pro (available with the Spatial Analyst extension), the new Model Comparison interface<\/a> gives the you ability to easily compare suitability models. You can identify where models are similar and where they differ. Explore what-if scenarios with various weights and settings. Once you have done the comparisons, select the model that best achieves your objectives.<\/p>\n Click on the following link to see a short video showing this feature in action.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Suitability Modeler now has a dedicated resource page! It will provide announcements, serve as a place where you can ask questions, learn tips and tricks, find out about new Blog posts, and more. Be sure to bookmark and check it out.<\/p>\n To get to it, from the ArcGIS Spatial Analyst Community page look for the new category for Suitability Modeler. The direct link is:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two new tools were introduced for density analysis that you can use to replace custom workflows that used several tools, custom scripts, and manual processing to achieve a result.<\/p>\n The Value Percentile Contours<\/a> tool creates polygon outlines (footprints) of the highest portions of the input value surface.<\/p>\n The Volume Percentile Contours<\/a> tool outlines the smallest area that contains the chosen share of the overall amount of the input value surface. You can use this tool to delineate the smallest area with a specified share of the whole amount of a phenomena.<\/p>\n Learn more about these tools in the following blog post:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Performance improvements were made in ArcGIS Pro 3.5, ArcGIS Enterprise 11.5 and ArcGIS Online to the Distance Accumulation and Distance Allocation tools in some scenarios that use the Vertical Factor or Horizontal Factor parameters.<\/p>\n While many scenarios perform well, certain input data characteristics could result in slow processing times. The changes we implemented to address those scenarios resulted in the tools running up to 50 times faster. The changes applied to the geoprocessing tools also apply to the corresponding raster functions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The generalization tools Expand<\/a> and Shrink<\/a> have an improvement in the quality of the output. Instances of cut-off cells appearing in the results for some narrow, wedge-shaped zones were minimized.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two new tools for hydrology analysis were introduced.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Adjust Stream to Raster<\/a> tool creates a new streamline output feature that aligns with an updated elevation raster input while also preserving the original stream paths. When an input raster is modified, it is important to ensure that it matches the defined streamlines, consequently the streamline features must be adjusted while preserving the accuracy of their paths. Additional optional outputs are available to assist in analysis.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Do you derive streamlines from elevation data, but struggle to incorporate the effects of storm water infrastructure such as culverts? If so, try out the new Locate Depressions<\/a> tool! This tool finds areas that are topographically lower than the surrounding terrain where water flow may be disrupted. It provides several ways to filter depressions, such as by shape, depth, or area, as well as by proximity to other elements like roads.<\/p>\n See the following blog post to learn more about this new tool:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Band Collection Statistics<\/a> tool has four new parameters available for calculating and visualizing statistics: Compute histogram, Number of Histogram Bins, Output Histogram Table, and Output Histogram Name.<\/p>\n The histograms you can create using these parameters are useful for inspecting the distribution of cell values in multiband rasters. There is also more formats available to report the output statistics, and support for additional environments to give you more control over the analysis.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Performance for the Locate Regions<\/a> tool was improved notably. This tool is CPU intensive, particularly as the number of seed locations and the resolution of growth parameters increase. It now runs on average twice as fast as before, and in some cases up to seven times faster.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Create Accuracy Assessment Points<\/a> tool has a new parameter. Use the Minimum Point Distance parameter to set a minimum distance between randomly sampled points for post classification accuracy assessment.<\/p>\n Use the new Remove Continuum parameter for the Linear Spectral Unmixing<\/a> tool to specify whether the spectra are or are not normalized from an image or reference data. The Spectral File or Training Features parameter supports two additional file formats.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two new tools for surface analysis were added, and improvements were made to another.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The new Multiscale Surface Deviation<\/a> tool is added to the collection of multiscale surface analysis tools. It calculates the maximum surface deviation from the mean value across a range of spatial scales for each cell in a raster.<\/p>\n Learn more about this tool in the following blog post:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Topographic Position Index<\/a> is a new tool that evaluates the elevation of each location on a surface relative to the surrounding landscape. In the resulting raster, positive TPI values typically indicate that a location is higher than its surroundings, such as in a peak or ridgeline. Negative TPI values indicate a location that is lower than its surroundings, such as a valley or canyon. Values closer to 0 represent gradual slopes or flat terrains. You can use the resulting raster in slope position or landform classifications.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In ArcGIS Online, two new tools are added, Tabulate Area<\/a> and Zonal Geometry as Table<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Enterprise, and ArcGIS Online, for the Zonal Statistics tools and function, the cell size of the value raster is now used as the analysis cell size for both raster and feature zone input by default. This matches the behavior for feature zone input which was supported in an earlier release.<\/p>\n The update makes the analysis more accurate because the value raster is the primary raster that influences the output results. To modify the default behavior, use the Cell Size environment to specify a number, a raster dataset, or the Maximum of Inputs or Minimum of Inputs options.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Zonal Statistics, Zonal Statistics as Table, and Zonal Characterization tools now support all processors that are available on the computer. By default, if no value is specified for the Parallel Processing Factor environment, the tools will use 80% of all available cores. The tools will apply additional cores if you set this environment to a higher value. This change provides improved performance in most cases, particularly with larger input data.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In a small but important detail, tools that honor the Cell Size environment now support an empty option in both the tool dialog box and the Python environment.<\/p>\n This environment sets the output raster resolution in which the analysis will be performed. The cell size can be set to match another raster dataset or a numeric value you specify. It can also be set to apply the maximum (coarsest) or minimum (finest) resolution of the inputs. Any tools that use the Maximum of Inputs or another special setting as the default will continue to do so.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Converting between different types of data is a necessary part of doing analysis. The Raster to Polygon<\/a> tool is commonly used in workflows that produce an output as a polygon feature layer from raster data. The performance of this tool is enhanced, particularly when vectorizing large rasters. Depending on the data and the settings, the conversion now typically completes in less than half the time. In some cases, it can be dramatically faster (in one case, a rasterization that took 2 hours completed in only 6 minutes only 6 minutes!).<\/p>\n Learn more in the following blog post:<\/p>\n Several Spatial Analyst tools can take advantage of GPU processing for improved performance. In ArcGIS Pro 3.6, some of those tools were updated to support the GPU ID and Processor Type geoprocessing environments. These environments give you more control over how they process the data, and which GPU the computer will use for analysis.<\/p>\n The Solar toolset tools are: Feature Solar Radiation and Raster Solar Radiation.<\/p>\n The Surface toolset tools are: Aspect, Feature Preserving Smoothing, Geodesic Viewshed, Multiscale Surface Deviation, Multiscale Surface Difference, Multiscale Surface Percentile, and Slope.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n More raster datasets have become available where the length and width of cells are not the same. Spatial Analyst historically operated on the premise that raster cells were square. To better accommodate raster data with rectangular cells, several Spatial Analyst tools were updated in how they process this type of input raster data. These tools now produce output rasters with square cells where the cell size is the calculated average between the length and the width of the input rectangular cells.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Supplemental Toolbox that was available for ArcMap is now available for Spatial Analyst in ArcGIS Pro 3.6!<\/p>\n The Supplemental Toolbox is a collection of tools that provides some additional analytical capability outside of what was available in the core software release. All the capabilities that were provided in the earlier iterations are available, and two additional tools are included.<\/p>\n The Create Flood Simulation Raster tool creates a multidimensional raster output from the flood simulation capabilities of ArcGIS Pro, which you can use to animate flood variables over time. Use the Locate Zonal Statistics tool to identify where the cells corresponding to a calculated zona statistic value are located within each input zone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The following blog post has more details on these tools, as well as download and installation instructions:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":" We have made even more educational resources available for you. See the following list of additional blogs that were published over the year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Distance:<\/p>\n Density:<\/p>\n Hydrology:<\/p>\n Multidimensional:<\/p>\n Overlay<\/p>\n Surface:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":" We introduced a new landing page that serves as the hub for news, links, and other things that are going on in the Spatial Analyst universe) to always keep you updated on what we are doing. Going forward, be sure to bookmark it and stay up to date.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you are interested in our summer internship program, feel free to check out Richard’s experience as a summer intern from his blog:<\/p>\n\n
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2. Density analysis<\/h3>\n
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3. Distance analysis<\/h3>\n
4. Generalization analysis<\/h3>\n
5. Hydrology analysis<\/h3>\n
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6. Multivariate analysis<\/h3>\n
7. Overlay analysis<\/h3>\n
8. Segmentation & Classification analysis<\/h3>\n
9. Surface analysis<\/h3>\n
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10. Zonal analysis<\/h3>\n
11. Other improvements<\/h3>\n
Cell Size analysis environment<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Data conversion<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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GPU Processing<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Rectangular cell handling<\/strong><\/h4>\n
12. Spatial Analyst Supplemental Tools 2.0<\/h3>\n
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Educational material<\/h2>\n
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Looking forward to 2026<\/h2>\n
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