Creating a Study Area to define your analysis to a geographic area

Study Areas are geographic boundaries created to define the extent of your analysis. These are created when starting a project to ensure your data and analysis are confined to a specified area.

You can create new study areas by following the steps in the Study Area Wizard. Select the Business Analyst drop-down to create a new study area. Your study area can be set up by state, county, CBSA, DMA, ZIP, whole USA, continental US, currently selected shapes, simple ring, and current extent. This example shows you how to select by county.

Upon completion, the study area will be outlined to indicate the boundaries for the specified area you have chosen. If you have more than one study area in your Table of Contents, the active study area will always be bold.