An overview of the Conflation toolset

GIS data often comes from many sources. Spatial and attribute differences among various data sources sometimes requires you to resolve the inconsistencies before you can make use of the data. Conflation tools help you reconcile data from multiple sources and obtain the best possible data quality for analysis and mapping.

Some data is geometrically distorted or shifted with respect to the data you maintain or you want to use. Conflation tools help you improve the positional accuracy of the data through spatial adjustments, edgematching, and rubbersheeting. These tools automatically find spatially corresponding features from input datasets, generate edgematch links or rubbersheet links, and perform edgematching or rubbersheeting adjustment using these links. You can also transfer feature attributes from one source of features to matching features of another source.

Tools in the Conflation toolset

Tool	Description
Align Features	Identifies inconsistent portions of the input features compared to target features within a search distance and aligns them with the target features.
Calculate Transformation Errors	Calculates residue errors and the root mean square error (RMSE) based on the coordinates of the input links between known control points to be used for spatial data transformation.
Edgematch Features	Modifies input line features by spatially adjusting their shapes, guided by the specified edgematch links, so they become connected with the lines in the adjacent dataset.
Generate Edgematch Links	Finds matching but disconnected line features along the edges of the source data's area and its adjacent data's area, and generates edgematch links from the source lines to the matched adjacent lines.
Generate Rubbersheet Links	Finds where the source line features spatially match the target line features and generates lines representing links from source locations to corresponding target locations for rubbersheeting.
Rubbersheet Features	Modifies input features by spatially adjusting them through rubbersheeting, using the specified rubbersheet links, so they are better aligned with the intended target features.
Split Line By Match	Splits features based on matching relationships to obtain better corresponding line segmentation.
Transfer Attributes	Finds where the source line features spatially match the target line features and transfers specified attributes from source features to matched target features.
Transform Features	Converts the coordinates of input features from one location to another through scaling, shifting, and rotating based on the transformation links between known corresponding control points.