Counting data points that fall within a geographic area

[CalumAH]

Hi all,

Very new to the world of GIS, so hoping for some guidance! I've been using Tableau for some time, but have hit up against its limitations here.

I have a series of .shp files that correspond to geographic areas in the UK (like Local Authorities). I also have a dataset with locations of businesses. I'd like to count how many businesses fall within a particular area. Is it possible to do this using ArcGIS at all? If so, how? If not, are there any other tools that anyone can point me toward?

Thanks!

Calum

[DanPatterson_Retired]

a Spatial Join would be a good choice first

Two new fields, Join_Count and TARGET_FID, are always added to the output feature class. Join_Count indicates how many join features match each target feature (TARGET_FID).

[CalumAH]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the quick reply, this looks really useful. I'll have an explore and see how I get on!

Thanks again,

Calum

[JoeBorgione]

Or a spatial selection:  Using Select By Location—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop