Finding duplicates of same point in feature class and only keep maximum of field using ArcPy?

Taming Those Pesky Duplicate Points in ArcGIS with ArcPy

Okay, so you’ve got some GIS data, right? And you suspect you might have a bit of a duplicate problem – those sneaky identical points hogging space and messing with your analysis. Trust me, we’ve all been there. Duplicate data is like that one weed that keeps popping up in your otherwise perfect digital garden. It can skew your stats, make your maps look wonky, and generally lead to bad decisions. But don’t worry, ArcPy’s got your back!

The thing is, just blasting away all the duplicates isn’t always the smartest move. Sometimes, those duplicates have different attribute info, and you want to keep the best one. Maybe you’ve got a field representing data quality, and you want to keep the point with the highest quality score. So, how do you find these twins and decide which one gets to stay?

First things first, let’s talk about finding those pesky duplicates. ArcGIS Pro actually has a tool called “Find Identical” that’s perfect for this. Think of it as a digital detective, sniffing out records that share the same characteristics – in our case, the exact same location. You can run this tool straight from ArcPy, which means you can automate the whole process.

Here’s a snippet of how that looks in code:

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