calc_distance_on_unit_sphere

pyhelpers.geom.calc_distance_on_unit_sphere(pt1, pt2)

Calculate distance between two points.

Parameters

  • pt1 (shapely.geometry.Point or list or tuple or numpy.ndarray) – a point

  • pt2 (shapely.geometry.Point or list or tuple or numpy.ndarray) – another point

Returns

distance (in miles) between pt1 and pt2 (relative to the earth’s radius)

Return type

float

Note

This function is modified from the original code available at [GEOM-CDOUS-1]. It assumes the earth is perfectly spherical and returns the distance based on each point’s longitude and latitude.

Examples:

>>> from pyhelpers.geom import calc_distance_on_unit_sphere
>>> from pyhelpers._cache import example_dataframe

>>> example_df = example_dataframe()
>>> example_df
            Longitude   Latitude
City
London      -0.127647  51.507322
Birmingham  -1.902691  52.479699
Manchester  -2.245115  53.479489
Leeds       -1.543794  53.797418

>>> london, birmingham = example_df.loc[['London', 'Birmingham']].values

>>> arc_len_in_miles = calc_distance_on_unit_sphere(london, birmingham)
>>> arc_len_in_miles
101.10431101941569