get_haversine_distance {eddington}

Compute the distance between two points using the Haversine formula

Description

Uses the Haversine great-circle distance formula to compute the distance between two latitude/longitude points.

Usage

get_haversine_distance(
  lat_1,
  lon_1,
  lat_2,
  lon_2,
  units = c("miles", "kilometers")
)

Arguments

lat_1, lon_1, lat_2, lon_2

The coordinates used to compute the distance.

units

The units of the output distance.

Value

The distance between two points in the requested units.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haversine_formula

Examples

# In NYC, 20 blocks == 1 mile. Thus, computing the distance between two
# points along 7th Ave from W 39 St to W 59 St should return ~1 mile.
w39_coords <- list(lat=40.75406905512651, lon=-73.98830604245481)
w59_coords <- list(lat=40.76684156255418, lon=-73.97908243833855)

get_haversine_distance(
  w39_coords$lat,
  w39_coords$lon,
  w59_coords$lat,
  w59_coords$lon,
  "miles"
)

# The total distance along a sequence of points can be computed. Consider the
# following sequence of points along Park Ave in the form of a list of points
# where each point is a list containing a `lat` and `lon` tag.
park_ave_coords <- list(
  list(lat=40.735337983655434, lon=-73.98973648773142),  # E 15 St
  list(lat=40.74772623378332, lon=-73.98066078090876),   # E 35 St
  list(lat=40.76026319186414, lon=-73.97149360922498),   # E 55 St
  list(lat=40.77301604875587, lon=-73.96217737679450)    # E 75 St
)

# We can create a function to compute the total distance as follows:
compute_total_distance <- function(coords) {
  sum(
    sapply(
      seq_along(coords)[-1],
      \(i) get_haversine_distance(
        coords[[i]]$lat,
        coords[[i]]$lon,
        coords[[i - 1]]$lat,
        coords[[i - 1]]$lon,
        "miles"
      )
    )
  )
}

# Then applying the function to our sequence results in a total distance.
compute_total_distance(park_ave_coords)