ArcGIS Buffer – Creating Inside Buffer with Attributes in ArcGIS

arcgis-desktopbuffergeoprocessing

How can I create buffers for polygons that:

a) lie only inside the polygon boundary, and
b) know who their parent is?

An example of where this is useful is First Nation Traditional Territories. There are overlaps all over the place and it’s nigh on impossible to sort out which is which, unless we leverage colour and/or pattern.

The Buffer Wizard is the usual way we’ve been creating buffers. It’s relatively fast and convenient and allows one to save the result in the .mxd as well as in the file system (the former means you don’t have to think about where to save it, and just get on with the job). Its major deficit though is that the buffers are dumb. They don’t know who they belong to or what their name is. In the example of FNTT, this means to draw Carcross Tagish FN differently from Teslin Tlingit Council and we have to create buffers twice, each time using selected features only. Suddenly no longer convenient. What is a better approach?

Best Answer

Use the Buffer Tool from the Analysis toolbox and enter a negative value for the buffer distance. Pick OUTSIDE_ONLY for the side type and then dissolve on the relevant attributes.

Requires Advanced license.

Once attributed buffers exist can we use Definition Queries to display only certain FN’s and/or show each one with a separate symbol all from a single feature class.

buffer tool with relevant fields highlighted

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QGIS – How to Create Inside Buffer with Attributes

As you already wrote, an "inside" buffer can be created by specifying a negative buffer distance. And without dissolve, the resulting features contain the original attributes.

[GIS] Multiple ring buffer with attributes

OK, how I did this, is loop through creating ring buffers on objects, and saving the output as a new featureclass in a standlone datasets collection. I then merged the featureclasses, like so:

tmp_merge = "path to area"\+ "tmp_merge"  
final_out_path_agg = final_staging + "_Agg"
final_out_path_simp = final_staging +  "_Simp"

#check if files exist and delete if they do; assume nothing
if (arcpy.Exists(tmp_merge)):
    arcpy.Delete_management(tmp_merge)   

#set up folder to search for polygon data
arcpy.env.workspace = scratchDB + "mytmpBuff.gdb/Polygons/"
#collate FC
fcs = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses()
L = []
count = 0
try:
    for fc in fcs:
        #append to array ready for merging
        L.append(fc)
        count = count + 1
except:
    print "Error collating FeatureClasses."

try:
    if count > 1:
        arcpy.Merge_management(L, tmp_merge)
    elif count == 0:
        arcpy.AddMessage("No FeatureClass Polygons located.")
        arcpy.AddMessage("Error collating FeatureClasses.")
        sys.exit(-1) 
except:
    arcpy.AddMessage("Error merging FeatureClasses.")

Then dissolved them

#overlaps dissolved
arcpy.Dissolve_management(tmp_merge, final_out_path_agg, "Name", [["RunID","FIRST"],["AltiLwr","FIRST"],["AltUpr","FIRST"],["TimeSl","FIRST"],["ConcentrationBand","FIRST"],["ConcLvl","FIRST"],["IsC","FIRST"]])  
arcpy.DeleteField_management(final_out_path_agg, "NAME")

The buffers are created in a loop and stored in arcpy.env.workspace = scratchDB + "mytmpBuff.gdb/Polygons/" before I later loop through them.

It works, or it does if I have understood your issue correctly!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

QGIS – How to Create Inside Buffer with Attributes

[GIS] Multiple ring buffer with attributes

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