[GIS] Extracting values of one point shapefile to another point shapefile

Question

I have a set of points along a river-channel which contain attributes to of the right and left riparian classification respectively. These points almost follow the channel center-line, and have been separated so that I have a point-shapefile with the right's bank classification and another shapefile for the left classification (let's call either shapefile as SHAPEF_CLASS). In the graphic below, the shapefile with the classification (desired attributes) is represented with the bold black dots.

The colored dots represent another shapefile that contains bathymetric data (SHAPEF_BATHY). I would like to assign the river bank classification attribute from SHAPEF_CLASS to SHAPEF_BATHY. I tried converting the SHAPEF_CLASS to a raster (see below) with the intention to use the Identity tool to extract the classification values. However, the resulting raster does not cover the extent of the river channel so most of the bathymetry point are not covered.

I am using ARCMAP 9.3. I used the default cell size (0.000048), but if I increase the cell size I end up loosing some of the classes from the SHAPEF_CLASS. I thought about converting the SHAPEF_CLASS from point to polyline, and increasing the width of the line so it would cover the entire width of the river channel and then extract the classification. I also have a polygon of the river channel. Not if that would be useful for what I want to do though.

Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Answer 1

If I understand your question, you would like to get attributes from the the black dots into the color dots. What if you used the near tool to get the OID of the nearest black dot to each color dot? Then do a join based on this OID to get whatever attributes you like from the black dots into the color dots.

Try the generate near table tool.
Calculates distances and other proximity information between features in one or more feature class or layer. Unlike the Near tool, which modifies the input, Generate Near Table writes results to a new stand-alone table and supports finding more than one near feature.