Aggregating geo-based trade areas and retrieving spatial info

[dgr2017]

Hello,

Background: I have a list of roughly 80 locations for which trade areas were created at the Census Tract level. Each location trade area is a collection of Census Tracts. 

Challenge: The trade areas were created externally and don't have any knowledge of how they were created. No methodology documentation left behind unfortunately. This is posing a challenge because I'm being tasked with better understanding these trade area extents so I can apply to new locations (for which trade area extents haven't been applied). 

Question: Wondering if there is a way to get a general understanding of the size of each location's trade area? For example, lets say the trade area of location A consists of 10 Census Tracts. Is there a way to aggregate these 10 Census Tracts into a spatial object and subsequently retrieve spatial information (e.g. radius size, drive-distance, drive-time, square miles, etc.) on that object? 

Explanation: Here's the reasoning behind my question above. I've been told the trade area extents are based (in large part) on the urbanity (density) of each location. This is important information because I happen to know the urbanity of each location. As a result, I'm hoping to retrieve spatial information on each of the trade areas and see how it differs based on urbanity. For example, urban core locations might have a radius of 2-miles, on average, versus 10 miles for rural locations. I also know the urbanity of each of the new locations so I'll be able to leverage this information to assign trade area extents to them.

I've attached a .pdf that'll hopefully allow you to visualize what I've laid out above. As you'll see, it's a map of a couple locations along with their corresponding Census Tract trade areas. I've also attached the Alteryx workbook I used to create the .pdf. Hopefully this is helpful but let me know if I can provide anything else.

Thanks!

Dave

[BenMoss · Accepted solution]

Hi!

For sure this sounds like something that is possible. Unfortunately I am having problems opening the yxzp file that you sent over but I will try and describe the solution for you.

Providing you now which cencus tracts create a trade area, which I believe you do, then you can use the summerize tool. You would group by your trade area ID field, what ever this may be, and then use then in the top panel select your spatial object which are representive of the cencus tracts. Go to 'Add', you will then see an option for 'Spatial' which within you will see 'Combine'. This proccess will create one large spatial object for each trade area. You can then use the spatial info tool to gather some very specific metrics about each trade area polygon.

Ben

[scottj · Accepted solution]

@BenMoss is spot on.  I am adding an example that groups the BG's into combined polygons and using the Spatial Info tool to get some data.  Then I split the polygons to points, and join to itself to create groups.  Now I can run a distance/drivetime against all points to get some aggregate info.  This should get you down the path to finding so good info on the data.

This is built in 2018.1, so adding a screenshot in case you have not updated.

[dgr2017]

Thanks a ton Ben and as usual, amazed at the how powerful a tool Alteryx is, especially when it comes to spatial analysis! Just created the workflow you detailed and feel like I'm armed with the information I need to move forward. Looks like Scott has taken it a step further so going to explore that as well. Really appreciate everything! Cheers, Dave.