Merge

Merge is a frequent operation for managing GIS data, which involves joining different data sets, layers, or feature classes into a unified set. This operation is often used to unify data, which is located in different files or layers, however, it is necessary to unite for further analysis, mapping, or data base management purposes. As a result of the merge operation, features of input datasets are added to the output dataset, and their geographical location along with corresponding attribute fields remain unchanged.

GIS experts perform the merge operation to join datasets of point, line and polygon geometries, which correspond to different regions, time periods or geographic locations. For example, roads located in different cities may be joined into a single roads dataset to carry out analysis for a certain region. Tools for carrying out the merge operation are provided by GIS software packages such as ArcGIS Pro and QGIS, as well as other geospatial databases and data processing systems. Depending on the specific data sets and field names, geometry types, coordinate reference system and attributes structure must be taken into account before performing the merge operation.