SPATIAL ANALYSIS:

OVERLAY

Presented by;

Dr Siti Zaleha Daud

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 OVERLAY
 An overlay operation combines the geometries and attributes
of two or more feature layers to create the output.
 The geometry of the output represents the geometric
intersection of features from the input layers.
 Each feature on the output contains a combination of
attributes from the input layers, and this combination differs
from its neighbors.
 Vector data are sometimes more efficient than raster data if
data are not dense.
vector data – operation on the selected data only
raster data - operation on all cells - even null values

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Figure 11.5
Overlay combines geometries and attributes from two layers into a
single layer. The dashed lines are not included in the output.

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 Feature Type and Overlay
Overlay operations can be classified by feature type into
point-in-polygon, line-in-polygon, and polygon-on-polygon.

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Figure 11.6
Point-in-polygon Overlay.

The input is a point layer (the dashed lines are for illustration
only and are not part of the point layer). The output is also a
point layer but has attribute data from the polygon layer.

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Figure 11.7
Line-in-polygon Overlay.

The input is a line layer (the dashed lines are for illustration only and are
not part of the line layer). The output is also a line layer. But the output
differs from the input in two aspects: the line is broken into two
segments, and the line segments have attribute data from the polygon
layer. 6
Figure 11.8
Polygon-on-polygon Overlay.

In the illustration, the two layers for overlay have the

same area extent. The output combines the geometry
and attribute data from the two layers into a single
polygon layer.

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 Overlay Methods
 All overlay methods are based on the Boolean
connectors of AND, OR, and XOR.
 An overlay operation is called Intersect if it uses the
AND connector.
 An overlay operation is called Union if it uses the OR
connector.
 An overlay operation that uses the XOR connector is
called Symmetrical Difference or Difference.
 An overlay operation is called Identity or Minus if it uses
the following expression: [(input layer) AND (identity
layer)] OR (input layer).

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Figure 11.9
The Union method keeps all areas of the two input layers
in the output.

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Figure 11.10
The Intersect method preserves only the common area to the two
input layers in the output.

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Figure 11.11
The Symmetric Difference method preserves only the common
area to only one of the input layers in the output.

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Figure 11.12
The Identity method produces an output that has the same extent as
the input layer. But the output includes the geometry and attribute
data from the identity layer.

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 SPATIAL OVERLAY
APPLICATION IN REAL
ESTATE

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Spatial Overlay
 MAP ALGEBRA (MULTIPLICATION)
OVERLAY BY MULTIPLICATION

DISTRICT CROP AREA OVERLAY

1 2
X =
1 2
3 4 1
B B
3 4

OVERLAY BY MAXIMUM VALUE

3 3 4 4 2 2 4 3 4
0 1 0 5 5 5 5 5 5
+ =
2 4 6 4 1 1 4 4 6
RAINFALL : RAINFALL: RAINFALL:
1980 1981 1980 - 1981
 Soil Type

Crops Production
(ton/ha)

Overlay Analysis

Overlay Result

GIS Technology: Relationship between Land use and Crop Productivity

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 Methods of Overlay
• Intersection map overlay can be grouped by
feature type;
– Point-in-polygon
– Line-in-polygon
– Polygon-on-polygon

• Map overlay Methods

- UNION: keeps all areas
- INTERSECT: preserves only common area
- IDENTITY: produces an output that has the same extent as the
input map

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ArcGIS – Overlay Intersect

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ArcGIS – Overlay Identity and Union

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 An overlay of three layers of data

W E

Moto rw a y1 2 k m. s hp
G la s g o w C ity C ou n c il - U K B O R D E R S .s hp
Nb rMea n of res id u a ls - 50 0m .s h p
-0.74 - -0 .5 7 ( gr eat es t o v er e st im ati o n )
-0.57 - -0 .3 5
-0.35 - 0
0
0 - 0 .3 5
0. 35 - 0.5 7
0. 57 - 0.7 8 (g r e ate s t u nd er e st im ati on )
4 0 4 Mile s No D a ta

Ordnance Survey Crown Copyright. All rights reserved

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 Slivers
 A common error from overlaying polygon layers is
slivers, very small polygons along correlated or shared
boundary lines of the input layers.
 To remove slivers, ArcGIS uses the cluster tolerance,
which forces points and lines to be snapped together if
they fall within the specified distance.

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Figure 11.13
The top boundary has a series of slivers (shaded areas).
These slivers are formed between the coastlines from the input
layers in overlay.

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Figure 11.14
A cluster tolerance can remove
many slivers along the top
boundary (A) but can also snap
lines that are not slivers (B).

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 Error Propagation in Overlay
 Error propagation results from inaccuracies of the input
layers.

 Slivers are examples of errors in the inputs that can

propagate to the analysis output.

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