Randomly assign points to new location based on polygon id - ArcGIS Pro

Question

I have multiple-point data and polygon data. All the points in the point data layers are supposed to lie within the polygon. However, some of the points are clustered at one XY position (about 10% of all the point data), for the purpose of this question LAT=0 and LONG=0. However, the attribute data for the points contain a field at indicates which region in the polygon the point can be found.

I would like to move the clustered points to a random XY location in their corresponding region (based on the geographic information from the polygon data). Does anyone have an idea of how to do this efficiently in ArcGIS Pro?

The attached figure shows the points and the polygon. The point in the red circle shows the location of all the points that need to be moved.

NB: Cross-posted to https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/randomly-assign-points-to-new-location-based-on/m-p/1257691#M65470

Cross posted to Randomly assign points to new location based on po... - Esri Community — bixb0012, Feb 13 '23 at 21:21
Your goal of assigning a "random ... location" doesn't make much sense. In the GIS world, location is important. Adding randomness reduces data quality. — Vince, Feb 13 '23 at 21:50
@Vince yes you are right. However, given the only location information available is the region, it is better than nothing. I intend to do a sensitivity analysis later to see whether excluding or including the "problem points' makes a difference in my result. — Ekow_ababio, Feb 13 '23 at 23:43

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 14 '23 at 03:51

Fortunately science world is not limited to GIS, so you can use Create Random Points tool and specify required number of points per polygon. So, populate polygons table by that amount (use frequency tool):

Move required points into separate feature class, compute their sequential number per polygon and combine it with polygon name:

Create random points and name them in the same way you did with original points:

Compute random points coordinates and move results into original point table. Calculate Shape field of points to move:

arcpy.Point( !POINT_X!, !POINT_Y!)

Randomly assign points to new location based on polygon id - ArcGIS Pro

1 Answers1