Visually correcting systematic shift between two geodatasets using ArcMap

Question

I often have two datasets that are obviously not georeferenced correctly. Most of the time a simple translation (shift by x/y) could fix this.

Is there an easy way to do this e.g. by specifying one or two reference points in the reference raster and the raster that is to be corrected?

Is there a simple WYSIWYG-approach (e.g. in ArcMap) to manually/visually reference one dataset with some points to another and perform the transformation?

This seems like such a basic and straightforward task, that I think a tool should exist for it, but I know of none amongst the several tools at my disposal (ArcGIS, QGIS, R, Python, GDAL, ...). I am aware of Shift Raster (Data Management) in ArcMap, but it requires known X/Y coordinates for the shift and doesn't work on vector-datasets. A workaround would be to extract coordinates of the two points, manually calculate the shift, and then use it with the tool. I'm hoping for something more elegant though. I also found Transform Features (Editing) in ArcMap, which is fine but this too is restricted (only feature datasets) and circumstantial (as far as I understand one has to create features to represent the transformation).

E.g. for the data below I know that the green dataset is positioned right. Therefore I'd like to perform the translation represented by the yellow arrow (x -> o) on the complete grey raster data (and actually two other datasets as well). I'd love to be able to do this by just clicking at those two points and then on "shift".

Answer 1

Depending on the data/problem, there are different approaches:

1. Datum shift: Your case appears to be a datum shift because everything is constantly offset to bottom left. You may be able to fix that by setting the transformation on your map? That would be the easiest approach taking about 5 seconds...

2. Coordinate shift: If the shift is because the data was collected/created in the wrong coordinate system then you have to do what you are doing, shift it.

   • Vector/Feature data: The spatial adjustment toolbar provides a WYSIWYG-approach. All the information you need is in the help file on these pages. However the Editor/Spatial Adjustment bars only work with vector data.

   • Raster data: As suggested in the comments, the corresponding WYSIWYG approach for raster data is the georeferencing toolbar.