Contents
What is a cost distance raster?
Cost Distance gives the distance to the nearest source for each cell in the raster, based on the least-accumulative cost over a cost surface. Cost Back Link gives the neighbor that is the next cell on the least-accumulative cost path to the nearest source.
What data sets are necessary to create a cost distance raster?
To create the path, first a cost distance surface must be created, which requires a source location dataset and a cost raster as inputs. The example will demonstrate creating a cost raster.
What is the least-cost path?
The least-cost path travels from the destination to the source. This path is one cell wide, travels from the destination to the source, and is guaranteed to be the cheapest route relative to the cost units defined by the original cost raster that was input into the weighted-distance tool.
How are raster distances measured?
Distance is measured between two points. The two points used when measuring distance on a raster (or grid) are the centers of two specific cells. That is, in the case of the raster, the measurements are made from cell center to cell center.
How is cost distance calculated?
The cost assigned to each cell represents the cost per unit distance for moving through the cell. The final value per cell is the cell size multiplied by the cost value. For example, if the cost raster has a cell size of 30, and a particular cell has a cost value of 10, the final cost of that cell is 300 units.
What is cost weighted distance?
Cost weighted distance analysis is to find out the accumulative cost of each cell to its nearest source. So, in cost weighted distance analysis, the accumulative cost includes not only the shortest distance from cell to the nearest source but also other costs, like time.
What is cost route approach?
In spatial analysis and geographic information systems, cost distance analysis or cost path analysis is a method for determining one or more optimal routes of travel through unconstrained (two-dimensional) space. It is thus based on the fundamental geographic principle of Friction of distance.
What are GIS costs?
Cost Surface Raster Grid. A cost surface, or cost grid, is a raster grid in which the value in each cell is the cost that a particular activity or object would be in that cell. It can also be an indexed value based on costliness. Costs could be measured monetarily or in other ways such as amount of time.
How does the cost distance raster work in ArcGIS?
The output cost distance raster. The cost distance raster identifies, for each cell, the least accumulative cost distance over a cost surface to the identified source locations. A source can be a cell, a set of cells, or one or more feature locations. The output raster is of floating point type.
How is the maximum distance determined in ArcGIS?
The Maximum distance is specified in the same cost units as those on the cost raster. For the output distance raster, the least-cost distance (or minimum accumulative cost distance) of a cell to a set of source locations is the lower bound of the least-cost distances from the cell to all source locations.
Can a cost raster have a negative value?
The values of the cost raster can be integer or floating point, but they cannot be negative or zero (you cannot have a negative or zero cost). Defines the threshold that the accumulative cost values cannot exceed. If an accumulative cost distance value exceeds this value, the output value for the cell location will be NoData.
Which is the default extent for cost distance?
Any cell location that is assigned NoData on the input cost surface will receive NoData on all output rasters (cost distance, allocation, and back link). If the input source data and the cost raster are different extents, the default output extent is the intersection of the two.