The Calculate Density tool creates a density raster map from point or line features by spreading known quantities of a phenomenon (represented as attributes of the points or lines) across the map.
The outputs are hosted imagery layers.
Learn more about how Kernel Density works
Examples
Possible uses include analyzing density of housing or occurrences of crime for community planning purposes and exploring how roads or utility lines influence wildlife habitat.
Usage notes
Calculate Density includes configurations for input layers, analysis settings, and output settings.
Input layers
The Input layers group includes the following parameters:
Input point or line features is the input point or line layer that will be used to calculate density.
Population field is a field specifying the number of incidents at each location.
If the default value of None is used, each location will be assumed to represent a single count.
Input barrier features specifies the dataset that defines the barriers. The barriers can be a feature layer of polyline or polygon features.
Analysis settings
The Analysis settings group includes the following parameters:
Output cell size is the cell size of the output raster.
The available units are feet, international feet, international yards, miles, statute miles, meters, and kilometers.
Search distance defines the distance that will be searched to find point or line features when calculating density values.
The available units are feet, international feet, international yards, miles, statute miles, meters, and kilometers.
Area units defines the output area unit. Density is count divided by area, and this parameter specifies the unit of the area in the density calculation.
The available areal units are square miles, square feet, square meters, and square kilometers.
Result layer
The Result layer group includes the following parameters:
Output raster name is the name of the output density raster layer that will be created.
The name must be unique. If a layer with the same name already exists in your organization, the tool will fail and you will be prompted to use a different name.
- Save in folder specifies the name of a folder in My Content where the result will be saved.
Environments
Analysis environment settings are additional parameters that affect a tool's results. You can access the tool's analysis environment settings from the Environment settings parameter group.
This tool honors the following analysis environments:
- Output coordinate system
- Processing extent
Note:
The default processing extent in Map Viewer is Full extent. This default is different from Map Viewer Classic in which Use current map extent is enabled by default.
- Snap raster
- Cell size
- Mask
- Parallel processing factor
Outputs
This tool includes the following outputs:
One raster layer that contains the calculated density values.
Usage requirements
This tool requires the following licensing and configurations:
- Creator or GIS Professional user type
- Publisher or Administrator role, or an equivalent custom role
- Available when the organization is configured for raster analytics with a premium capability license
References
- Silverman, B. W. Density Estimation for Statistics and Data Analysis. New York: Chapman and Hall, 1986.
Resources
Use the following resources to learn more:
- How Kernel Density works
- Calculate Density in ArcGIS REST API
- calculate_density in ArcGIS API for Python
- Calculate Density in ArcGIS Pro with the Raster Analysis extension
- Kernel Density in ArcGIS Pro with the Spatial Analyst extension