Esri’s GeoPlanner for ArcGIS application provides powerful analysis capabilities through the weighted overlay analysis modeler. This modeler consumes weighted overlay services composed of pre-processed raster layers. Creating custom weighted overlay services for GeoPlanner is a difficult and complex process that requires both domain-specific and GIS expertise. This challenge was addressed by simplifying the weighted overlay service creation workflow and developing two new custom Python tools that guide GeoPlanner users through the process of preparing input datasets and then classifying the raster datasets. Where possible these tools automate the required steps and where user input is needed, the tools provide default recommendations based on the input datasets properties and characteristics. As a result, the weighted overlay services creation workflow has been significantly improved and more GeoPlanner users can include their own data in weighted overlay analyses
