Obtaining the Tutorial Data

Before beginning the tutorial, you will copy all of the required tutorial data onto your Desktop. Option 1 is best if you are completing this tutorial in one of our short courses or from the GIS/Data Center and Option 2 is best if you are completing the tutorial from your own computer.

OPTION 1: Accessing tutorial data from Fondren Library using the gistrain profile

If you are completing this tutorial from a public computer in Fondren Library and are logged on using the gistrain profile, follow the instructions below:

1. On the Desktop, double-click the Computer icon > gisdata (\\file-rnas.rice.edu) (R:) > Short_Courses  >  Introduction_to_Geoprocessing.
2. To create a personal copy of the tutorial data, drag the Geoprocessing folder onto the Desktop.
3. Close all windows.

OPTION 2: Accessing tutorial data online using a personal computer

If you are completing this tutorial from a personal computer, you will need to download the tutorial data online by following the instructions below:

1. Click Geoprocessing.zip above to download the tutorial data.
2. Open the Downloads folder.
3. Right-click Geoprocessing.zip and select Extract All....
4. In the 'Extract Compressed (Zipped) Folders' window, accept the default location into the Downloads folder and click Extract.
5. Drag the unzipped Geoprocessing folder onto your Desktop.
6. Close all windows.

Geoprocessing in ArcGIS Pro

Opening an Existing Project

1. On the Desktop, double-click the Geoprocessing folder.
2. Double-click the Geoprocessing.aprx project file to open the project in ArcGIS Pro.

The first set of data you will be working with contains the HPD beat boundaries. Though it has been modified for the purposes of this tutorial, the original data can be obtained from the City of Houston GIS Database webpage, at http://cohgis.houstontx.gov/cohgis2010/index.html[g1] , within the administrative boundary dataset.

1. On the right side of the screen, in the Catalog pane, under the Project tab, double-click Folders > GeoprocessingTutorialData.
2. Double-click the GeoprocessingData geodatabase to expand it.
3. Drag the HPDBeats_North feature class into the Map Display.
4. Drag the HPDBeats_South feature class into the Map Display.

Notice that the police beats in the City of Houston have been divided into two separate feature classes covering the northern and southern portions of the city respectively. You will now examine their attribute tables.

1. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPDBeats_North layer and select Attribute Table.

Notice that you are provided with both the beat number and the district number for each police beat, and there are 55 beats in the north layer.

1. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPDBeats_South layer and select Attribute Table.

Notice that the south layer contains 62 beats with the same data fields.

1. Close the attribute tables.

At this point, you wish to combine the north and south police beats into a single layer. You will do so using a geoprocessing tool.

1. On the Analysis tab, click the Tools button.

Notice that on the right side of the screen, where the Contents pane was, a Geoprocessing pane appears.

1. In the Geoproccessing pane, select Toolboxes, and then click Data Management Tools toolbox > General toolset > Merge tool.
2. In the upper right corner of the ‘Merge’ pane, click the help button.

Read the Merge pane help and review the sample illustration.  Notice that this tool merges two like datasets covering different geographic extents together in a single dataset.

1. In the ‘Input Datasets’ drop-down menu, click the drop-down arrow and select the HPDBeats_South layer.

After selecting the HPDBeats_South layer, another drop-down window appears.

1. Click the second drop-down arrow and select the HPDBeats_North layer.

Notice that the when you hover over the Output dataset window, Output Dataset defaults to your default geodatabase (C:\Users\gistrain\Desktop\GeoprocessingTutorialData\HoustonSchoolsAndCrime\HoustonSchoolsAndCrime.gdb).

1. For ‘Output Dataset’, rename the feature class from “HPDBeats_South_Merge” or “HPDBeats_North_Merge” to “HPD_Beats.’
2. Leave all other settings as the default.
3.  Ensure that your merge pane appears like the pane below and click Run.

Usually, it takes a few moments for the tool to begin executing. While the tool is running, you will notice text with the name of the running tool in the bottom right corner of the Map Display, as shown below.

When the tool is finished running, you will see a box pop-up in the bottom right portion of your monitor with the name of the tool. A green checkmark indicates that the tool ran successfully.

1. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPDBeats layer and select Attribute Table.

Scroll down the attribute table and notice that the attributes for both the north and south beats feature classes were preserved and combined into a single table with 117 beats.

1. Close the attribute table.

Since you now have all the beats contained in a single layer, you no longer need the separate layers for the north and south beats.

1. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPDBeats_North layer and select Remove.
2. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPDBeats_South layer and select Remove.
3. On the toolbar, click the Save button.

As explained in the tutorial introduction, the collaboration with the schools is going to be based on the police districts, not the police beats. At this point, your HPD layer only displays the police beat boundaries, but its attribute table does tell you the district number corresponding to each beat.

1. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPD_Beats layer and select Attribute Table.

Scroll down the attribute table while observing the values in the District field. Notice that each district contains many beats. You will now dissolve the police beats based on this District field so that all beat boundaries within a single district will be dissolved into a single district boundary.

1. Close the attribute table.
2. On the Analysis tab, click the Tools button.
3. Under the Toolboxes tab in the Geoprocessing pane, click the Data Management Tools toolbox > click the Generalization toolset > click the Dissolve tool.

Read the Dissolve help and review the sample illustration. Notice that this tool dissolves boundaries based on common field values. In this case, you will dissolve the police beat boundaries based on common district values, resulting in a file showing only the larger district boundaries.

1. For ‘Input Features’, drag in the HPDBeats layer from the Contents pane.
2. For ‘Output Feature Class’, rename the feature class from “HPD_Beats_Dissolve” to “HPDDistricts”.
3. For ‘Dissolve_Field(s)’, select the District field, since this is the field containing the common district values you wish to dissolve on.
4. Ensure that your Dissolve pane looks like the pane below, and click Run.

1. In the Contents pane, toggle the new HPDDistricts layer off and on to understand the result of the Dissolve tool.
2. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPDDistricts layer and select Attribute Table.

Notice that only the dissolve field, in this case the District field, was preserved. Because multiple beats were dissolved into each district, it is not possible to retain all of the attributes of each separate beat.

1. Close the attribute table.

Since you only need to use the police districts, you may now remove the police beats layer.

1. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPDBeats layer and select Remove.
2. Click the Save button.

Now you will examine the school district boundaries. Though it has been modified for the purposes of this tutorial, the original data can also be obtained online from the City of Houston GIS Database webpage at http://cohgis.houstontx.gov/cohgis2010/index.html[g2]  within the administrative boundary dataset.

1. On the right side of the screen, close the Geoprocessing pane.
2. In the Catalog pane, click Folders > GeoprocessingTutorialData > GeoprocessingData.gdb.
3. Drag the HISD feature class into the Map Display.

Notice that this feature class displays the boundary of the Houston Independent School District, which can be considered the study area boundary for this project. All of the other data layers you bring into your map document can be clipped to the study area boundary to reduce the size of the files you are working with, which will eliminate visual clutter and allow various processes to run more quickly. First, you will clip the police districts to the study area boundary.

1. In the Analysis tab, click the Tools button >Analysis Tools toolbox > Extract toolset > Clip tool.

Read the Clip pane help and review the sample illustration. Notice that this tool clips one dataset to the extent, or shape, of another dataset.

1. For ‘Input Features’, drag in the HPDDistricts layer from the Contents pane.
2. For ‘Clip Features’, drag in the HISD layer from the Contents pane.
3. For ‘Output Feature Class’, rename the feature class from “HPDDistricts_Clip” to “HPDDistricts_HISD” and click Run.

Notice that the resulting HPDDistricts_HISD layer maintains the police district boundaries, but limits the extent of the districts to the extent of the HISD boundary. You no long need the full police districts layer and may remove it.

1. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPDDistricts layer and select Remove.

You will now work with a dataset containing the locations of all violent crimes (including murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery) occurring in 2010, as reported by HPD. Though the data has been pre-processed for this tutorial, the original data tables can be obtained online from the Houston Police Department Crime Statistics webpage at http://www.houstontx.gov/police/cs/stats2.htm.

1. On the right side of the screen, close the Geoprocessing pane.
2. In the Catalog pane, drag the HPDCrime2010 feature class into the Map Display.
3. If the ‘Geographic Coordinate Systems Warning’ window appears, click Close.

You will now clip the crime layer to the study area boundary to reduce the size of the dataset.

1. In the Analysis tab, click the Tools button >Analysis Tools toolbox > Extract toolset > Clip tool.
2. For ‘Input Features’, drag in the HPDCrime2010 layer from the Contents pane.
3. For ‘Clip Features’, drag in the HISD layer from the Contents pane.
4. For ‘Output Feature Class’, rename the feature class from “HPDCrime2010_Clip” to “HPDCrime2010_HISD” and click Run.
5. In the Contents pane, right-click the HISDCrime2010_HISD layer and select Attribute Table.

Notice that you are provided with the date and hour of the crime, the type of offense, the premise code, the number of offenses, and the approximate address. Since crimes are actually only reported by the block address range, not the exact street address, this address represents the midpoint of the block on which the crime was reported.

1. Close the attribute table.
2. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPDCrime2010 layer and select Remove.
3. In the Contents pane, uncheck the HPDCrime2010_HISD and HISD layers, so that only the HPDDistricts_HISD layer is visible.
4. Click the Save button.

The final dataset you will work with contains the locations of all the elementary schools in HISD. Though it has been modified for the purposes of this tutorial, the original data can be obtained online from the Texas Education Agency School District Locator Data Download webpage at http://schoolsdata2-tea-texas.opendata.arcgis.com/

1. On the right side of the screen, close the Geoprocessing pane.
2. In the Catalog pane, drag the HISDElemSchools feature class into the Map Display.
3. In the Contents pane, right-click the HISDElemSchools layer and select Attribute Table.

Notice that you are provided with the elementary school name, address, and grade range.

1. Close the attribute table.

Now you will create a one-half mile buffer around each school, so that you will later be able to count the number of violent crimes occurring in 2010 within each buffer.

1. In the Analysis tab, click the Tools button > the Analysis Tools toolbox > the Proximity toolset > Buffer tool.
2. For ‘Input Features’, drag in the HISDElemSchools layer from the Contents pane.
3. For ‘Output Feature Class’, rename the feature class from “HISDElemSchols_Buffer” to “HISDElemSchools_HalfMileBuffer”.
4. For ‘Distance [value or field]’, type “0.5” and use the unit drop-down box to select Miles.
5. Click Run.
6. In the Contents pane, right-click the HISDElemSchools_HalfMileBuffer layer and select Attribute Table.

Notice that all three fields contained in the original schools point layer (school name, address, and grade range) have been preserved. In addition, a new field has been added stating the radius of the buffer in feet.

1. Close the attribute table.
2. Click the Save button.
3. In the Contents pane, uncheck the HISDElemSchools layer and check the HPDCrime2010_HISD layer.

At this point, you can see all of the violent crime locations along with the half-mile school buffers, but much of the map is so densely covered with overlapping points that it becomes difficult to tell exactly how many points there are and to see the underlying school buffers. In addition, while you can see the spatial distribution of the points, you are not provided with any sort of useful summary of the data. Performing a spatial join will allow you to discover exactly how many violent crimes occurred within a half mile of each school in 2010.

The goal of performing a spatial join is to add a numeric field to the end of the school buffer attribute table that tells you how many crime points are contained within each school buffer.

1. In the Contents pane, right-click the HISDElemSchools_HalfMileBuffer layer and select Joins and Relates > Spatial Join
2. For ‘Join Features’, use the drop-down box to select the HPDCrime2010_HISD layer.
3. For ‘Merge Rule,’ click the drop down arrow to select Count.
4. For ‘Output Feature Class,’ rename the feature class from “Join_Output” to “HISDElemSchools_HalfMileBuffer_WithCrimeStats.”
5. Ensure that your Spatial Join pane appears like the pane below and click Run.

The new layer should appear at the top of your Contents pane. 

1. Right-click the HISDElemSchools_HalfMileBuffer_WithCrimeStats layer and select Attribute Table.
2. Notice the newly added Join_Count field.  This field tells you how many crime points are contained within each school buffer.
3. Close the attribute table.

Since the newly joined buffer layer contains all of the same information as the original buffer layer, plus the new Join_Count and Sum fields, you no longer need the original buffer layer. Since your crime data has now3 been summarized, you no longer need the original crime points either.

1. In the Contents pane, right-click the HISDElemSchools_HalfMileBuffer layer and select Remove.
2. In the Contents pane, right-click the HPDCrime2010_HISD layer and select Remove.
3. Click the HISDElemSchools_HalfMileBuffer_WithCrimeStats layer to select it.
4. Under Feature Layer, on the Appearance tab, in the Drawing group, click the drop-down arrow under Symbology.
5. Under ‘Symbolize your layer by quantities’ click Graduated Colors.
6. In the ‘Field:’ box, click the drop-down arrow and select the Join_Count field.
7. In the ‘Color Scheme:’ box, leave the default selection of Graduated colors.
8. Under the Upper Value column, click the first upper value box 27.000000 and type “25” and press Enter to move to the next range.
9. Type “50” and press Enter.
10. Type 100” and press Enter.
11. Type 150” and press Enter.
12. Type 200” and press Enter.

You can now easily tell which schools have the largest number of violent crimes occurring within a half mile radius.

1. Click the Save button.

You now have an attribute table that tells you the number of violent crimes that occurred within one year within a half mile of each school, but you would also like to have a table that tells you in which police district each elementary school lies. To create this table, you will perform another spatial join to add the attributes of the police beat to the back of each school that lies inside it.

1. In the Contents pane, uncheck the HISDElemSchools_HalfMileBuffer_WithCrimeStats layer and check the HISDElemSchools layer.

At this point, only the elementary school point locations and the police district boundaries should be visible.

1. In the Contents pane, right-click the HISDElemSchools layer and select Attribute Table.
2. Scroll to the right and browse through all of the attributes.

Remember that, at this point, the attribute table only contains the school name, address, and grade range.

1. Close the attribute table.
2. In the Contents pane, right-click the HISDElemSchools layer and select Joins and Relates > Spatial Join
3. For ‘Join Features’, use the drop-down box to select the HPDDistricts_HISD layer.
4. For ‘Merge Rule,’ click the drop down arrow to select Join.
5. For ‘Output Feature Class,’ rename the feature class from “HISDElemSchools_SpatialJoin” to “HISDElemSchools_WithHPDDistricts.”
6. Click Run.

The new layer should appear at the top of your Contents pane. 

1. Right-click the HISDElemSchools_WithHPDDistricts layer and select Attribute Table.
2. Scroll to the right and notice the newly added District field. The District field tells you which police district each school falls within.

Notice that the five schools do not have a district assigned to them. That is because those schools fall within HISD, but do not fall within the City of Houston police jurisdiction.

1. Close the attribute table.

In this tutorial, you navigated to various geoprocessing tools directly through the Toolbox; however, it is likely that when you go to work on your own, you may not remember exactly where all those tools are located.  As long as you can remember the name of the tool or what it does, you can find it using the search function.

1. On the Analysis tab, click the Tools button.
2. At the top of the Geoprocessing pane, in the Search box, type “Buffer” and press Enter.

Click on the first tool that says Buffer (Analysis Tools) to open th