ArcGIS Conflation Tool Recommendation or Custom Script for Comparing Points [closed]

Question

Can anyone recommend conflation tools for ArcGIS Desktop (10 or 10.1, paid or free) or a scripting outline / procedure (or just a script) to have a technician efficiently process the following rules?

We need to compare and update 2 points of interest (POI) point layers, let's call them MasterPOI and ComparePOI. Aprox 30k points in each. The rules for a technician would be the following:

1. Find any ComparePOI points within a ~1000m of MasterPOI.
2. If a ComparePOI point has a better location or a better description (using their human judgement), update MasterPOI with either location or its description field.
3. Separate step maybe -- then any ComparePOI point not used to update MasterPOI, simply add it to the MasterPOI. Most points would fall into this category. (I'm thinking just put a flag on a feature in ComparePOI when #2 occurs.)

I could script it myself eventually, but wondering if someone has some experience they could share

Answer 1

Take a look at conflex by citygate gis. We used this for a nationwide job a few years ago that required adjusting roads and point junctions to various boundaries in ArcGIS. The spatial adjustment tools in ArcGIS didnt have the functionality we required even with customization so we looked at off the shelf solutions. Conflex had the usual spatial and attribute matching routines but also included some clever pattern recognition that increased the hits to around 85-90%. Their QA tools are ok but we also had to use the data reviewer extension for some of our requirements.

Its probably an overkill for you with just point to point matching but short of writing your own tools, there just isn't a lot of options out there. Unfortunately we don't have scripts to share.

Answer 2

MapMerger is a powerful conflation extension that is completely integrated into ArcGIS. MapMerger automated conflation is something like 200X faster than doing the same conflation task manually.