An overview of the Neighborhood toolset

Available with Spatial Analyst license.

Neighborhood tools create output values for each cell location based on the location value and the values identified in a specified neighborhood. The neighborhood type can be either moving or search radius.

Moving neighborhoods can either be overlapping or non-overlapping. The Focal Statistics tool employs overlapping neighborhoods to calculate a specified statistic for the cells within a specified neighborhood around each input cell. For example, you may want to find the mean or maximum value in a 3 x 3 neighborhood around every cell in an input raster. The Filter tool is a specific type of focal operation that uses a high- or low-pass filter to accentuate or smooth the data. The non-overlapping neighborhood tool, Block Statistics, allows statistics to be calculated in a specified non-overlapping neighborhood. This tool is particularly useful for changing the resolution of a raster to a coarser cell size. The values assigned to the coarser cells can be based on another calculation, such as the maximum value in the coarser cell as opposed to using the default nearest neighbor interpolation.

The search radius tools perform various calculations based on what is within a specified distance from point or linear features. These are the Point Statistics and Line Statistics tools, respectively.

The following table lists the available Neighborhood tools and provides a brief description of each.

ToolDescription

Block Statistics

Partitions the input into non-overlapping blocks and calculates the statistic of the values within each block. The value is assigned to all of the cells in each block in the output.

Filter

Performs either a smoothing (Low pass) or edge-enhancing (High pass) filter on a raster.

Focal Flow

Determines the flow of the values in the input raster within each cell's immediate neighborhood.

Focal Statistics

Calculates for each input cell location a statistic of the values within a specified neighborhood around it.

Line Statistics

Calculates a statistic on the attributes of lines in a circular neighborhood around each output cell.

Point Statistics

Calculates a statistic on the points in a neighborhood around each output cell.

Tools of the Neighborhood toolset

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