[R] calculate spatial distance

[Charles C. Berry]

 	RSiteSearch("longitude distance")


pops up a bunch of results that seem pertinent. e.g.

 	R: Distance Between Geographic Coordinates (score: 4)

 	R: Distance Along Great Circle Arc (score: 2)

??


On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Sarah Goslee wrote:

> I don't know of such a function, but you have several options:
>
> 1. Assume that Euclidean distance is "good enough" - probably
> reasonable over a limited geographic region (and commonly done).
> 2. Use your GIS software to do the calculations since it already
> "understands" projections and distances on a sphere.
> 3. Write a function to do this yourself and make it available to
> other researchers who need this capability. Assuming that
> great circle distances on a perfect sphere are good enough, it
> isn't that hard to do.
>
> Eh, I talked myself into it (runs, but otherwise untested):
>
> geogdist <- function(lat1, lon1, lat2, lon2)
> {
> # takes latitude and longitue for points 1 and 2
> # returns great circle distances in km
> # south and west are negative
>
> rad <- function(x) { (x/360) * 2 * pi }
> deg <- function(x) { (x/(2 * pi)) * 360 }
>
> gd <- (sin(rad(lat1)) * sin(rad(lat2))) + (cos(rad(lat1)) *
> cos(rad(lat2)) * cos(rad(abs(lon2-lon1))))
>
> gd <- deg(acos(gd))
>
> 111.23 * gd
>
> }
>
>
>
> On Oct 30, 2007 11:49 AM,  <robert.ptacnik at niva.no> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I have a set of locations defined by longitude and latitude (in degrees),
>> and want to calculate the spatial (or geographic) distance among all
>> locations.
>> I did not find such a function in the spatial-related packages. (I *cannot*
>> use 'dist', as I have geographic, not cartesian coordinates).
>> thanks!
>> Robert
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Sarah Goslee
> http://www.functionaldiversity.org
>
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>

Charles C. Berry                            (858) 534-2098
                                             Dept of Family/Preventive Medicine
E mailto:cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu	            UC San Diego
http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/  La Jolla, San Diego 92093-0901