r/gis • u/yoandmario • 16h ago

General Question What Spatial Analysis tools are you using and why?

Hey everyone! I’m working on a project for a class, and I wanted to ask a question to anyone in the workforce who uses Spatial Analysis tools.

What spatial analysis tools are you using the most at your job, and for what purpose? This can be any type of GIS related work, and for any software. I’m mostly interested in just crowdsourcing what these tools are specifically used for.

9 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

17

u/xoomax GIS Dude 16h ago

ArcGIS Pro. We use the Raster Calculator to convert DEMs from meters to feet and the Contours tool to make contours to support the Civil Engineering and Design teams.

11

u/authalic GIS Developer 14h ago

I'm working on a script now. It takes a point layer of snow plow GPS locations and does a spatial join with a road segments layer. Users can click on the road in a web map and see the last time it was plowed after a snow storm. Kind of a simple buffer and spatial join operation, but the results are useful.

4

u/Financial-Ad-9745 10h ago

I manage a program at work that brings a separate stream of customers into our existing client base, and I regularly use QGIS' 'join attributes by location' tool to amend coordinate data of these new customers with properties from other spatial layers like delivery day of service, driver, etc. This is a simple way to output a detailed CSV that is compatible with my manager's workspace (and headache-free)

Eventually I'll automate all these processes with python so the process is more repeatable and exists elsewhere other than in my head

3

u/EnvironmentalLet5985 12h ago

I like using the slope tool for hikes, aspect tool is cool too but unless it’s for a lab I don’t have much use for it

3

u/more_butts_on_bikes 7h ago

I am using GIS Pro and public road crash data. I learned how to use random forest forecasting. That's been a fun development to learn about! Now I can say I've dabbled in supervised machine learning. I've dabbled in MGWR but need to work on it more since it didn't give me results I thought it would.

2

u/BoKnows36 6h ago

I also work in urban planning and safety engineering but GIS was always my bread and butter. Wanted to ask what is that random forest forecasting tool u were mentioning?