Calculating Distance Between Two Geographic Locations

Calculate distance between 2 GPS coordinates

Calculate the distance between two coordinates by latitude and longitude, including a Javascript implementation.

West and South locations are negative.
Remember minutes and seconds are out of 60 so S31 30' is -31.50 degrees.

Don't forget to convert degrees to radians. Many languages have this function. Or its a simple calculation: radians = degrees * PI / 180.

function degreesToRadians(degrees) {
  return degrees * Math.PI / 180;
}

function distanceInKmBetweenEarthCoordinates(lat1, lon1, lat2, lon2) {
  var earthRadiusKm = 6371;

  var dLat = degreesToRadians(lat2-lat1);
  var dLon = degreesToRadians(lon2-lon1);

  lat1 = degreesToRadians(lat1);
  lat2 = degreesToRadians(lat2);

  var a = Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +
          Math.sin(dLon/2) * Math.sin(dLon/2) * Math.cos(lat1) * Math.cos(lat2); 
  var c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1-a)); 
  return earthRadiusKm * c;
}

Here are some examples of usage:

distanceInKmBetweenEarthCoordinates(0,0,0,0)  // Distance between same 
                                              // points should be 0
0

distanceInKmBetweenEarthCoordinates(51.5, 0, 38.8, -77.1) // From London
                                                          // to Arlington
5918.185064088764

Calculating distance between two geographic locations

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/Location.html

Look into distanceTo

Returns the approximate distance in meters between this location and
the given location. Distance is defined using the WGS84 ellipsoid.

or distanceBetween

Computes the approximate distance in meters between two locations, and
optionally the initial and final bearings of the shortest path between
them. Distance and bearing are defined using the WGS84 ellipsoid.

You can create a Location object from a latitude and longitude:

Location locationA = new Location("point A");

locationA.setLatitude(latA);
locationA.setLongitude(lngA);

Location locationB = new Location("point B");

locationB.setLatitude(latB);
locationB.setLongitude(lngB);

float distance = locationA.distanceTo(locationB);

or

private double meterDistanceBetweenPoints(float lat_a, float lng_a, float lat_b, float lng_b) {
    float pk = (float) (180.f/Math.PI);

    float a1 = lat_a / pk;
    float a2 = lng_a / pk;
    float b1 = lat_b / pk;
    float b2 = lng_b / pk;

    double t1 = Math.cos(a1) * Math.cos(a2) * Math.cos(b1) * Math.cos(b2);
    double t2 = Math.cos(a1) * Math.sin(a2) * Math.cos(b1) * Math.sin(b2);
    double t3 = Math.sin(a1) * Math.sin(b1);
    double tt = Math.acos(t1 + t2 + t3);
   
    return 6366000 * tt;
}

Calculate distance between two latitude-longitude points? (Haversine formula)

This link might be helpful to you, as it details the use of the Haversine formula to calculate the distance.

Excerpt:

This script [in Javascript] calculates great-circle distances between the two points –
that is, the shortest distance over the earth’s surface – using the
‘Haversine’ formula.

function getDistanceFromLatLonInKm(lat1,lon1,lat2,lon2) {
  var R = 6371; // Radius of the earth in km
  var dLat = deg2rad(lat2-lat1);  // deg2rad below
  var dLon = deg2rad(lon2-lon1); 
  var a = 
    Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +
    Math.cos(deg2rad(lat1)) * Math.cos(deg2rad(lat2)) * 
    Math.sin(dLon/2) * Math.sin(dLon/2)
    ; 
  var c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1-a)); 
  var d = R * c; // Distance in km
  return d;
}

function deg2rad(deg) {
  return deg * (Math.PI/180)
}

Function to calculate distance between two coordinates

What you're using is called the haversine formula, which calculates the distance between two points on a sphere as the crow flies. The Google Maps link you provided shows the distance as 2.2 km because it's not a straight line.

Wolfram Alpha is a great resource for doing geographic calculations, and also shows a distance of 1.652 km between these two points.

If you're looking for straight-line distance (as the crow files), your function is working correctly. If what you want is driving distance (or biking distance or public transportation distance or walking distance), you'll have to use a mapping API (Google or Bing being the most popular) to get the appropriate route, which will include the distance.

Incidentally, the Google Maps API provides a packaged method for spherical distance, in its google.maps.geometry.spherical namespace (look for computeDistanceBetween). It's probably better than rolling your own (for starters, it uses a more precise value for the Earth's radius).

For the picky among us, when I say "straight-line distance", I'm referring to a "straight line on a sphere", which is actually a curved line (i.e. the great-circle distance), of course.

Calculating Distance between two Latitude and Longitude GeoCoordinates

The GeoCoordinate class (.NET Framework 4 and higher) already has GetDistanceTo method.

var sCoord = new GeoCoordinate(sLatitude, sLongitude);
var eCoord = new GeoCoordinate(eLatitude, eLongitude);

return sCoord.GetDistanceTo(eCoord);

The distance is in meters.

You need to reference System.Device.

Getting distance between two points based on latitude/longitude

Edit: Just as a note, if you just need a quick and easy way of finding the distance between two points, I strongly recommend using the approach described in Kurt's answer below instead of re-implementing Haversine -- see his post for rationale.

This answer focuses just on answering the specific bug OP ran into.

---

It's because in Python, all the trig functions use radians, not degrees.

You can either convert the numbers manually to radians, or use the radians function from the math module:

from math import sin, cos, sqrt, atan2, radians

# approximate radius of earth in km
R = 6373.0

lat1 = radians(52.2296756)
lon1 = radians(21.0122287)
lat2 = radians(52.406374)
lon2 = radians(16.9251681)

dlon = lon2 - lon1
dlat = lat2 - lat1

a = sin(dlat / 2)**2 + cos(lat1) * cos(lat2) * sin(dlon / 2)**2
c = 2 * atan2(sqrt(a), sqrt(1 - a))

distance = R * c

print("Result:", distance)
print("Should be:", 278.546, "km")

The distance is now returning the correct value of 278.545589351 km.

How to calculate distance between two locations?

If you want distance between two points on map then you can use below function

Location locationA = new Location("point A");

locationA.setLatitude(latA);
locationA.setLongitude(lngA);

Location locationB = new Location("point B");

locationB.setLatitude(latB);
locationB.setLongitude(lngB);

float distance = locationA.distanceTo(locationB);

OR If you want distance by road then you can use below Google api :

http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/distancematrix/json?origins=54.406505,18.67708&destinations=54.446251,18.570993&mode=driving&language=en-EN&sensor=false

Calculate the distance between two Geographical Coordinates in Java

The distance function will return the distance between two points in meteres

public double distance() {

    double lat1 = 44.40239182909422;
    double lon1 = 8.930511474608954;
    double lat2 = 30.297017883371236;
    double lon2 = 122.3822021484364;
    double theta = lon1 - lon2;
    double dist = Math.sin(deg2rad(lat1)) * Math.sin(deg2rad(lat2)) + Math.cos(deg2rad(lat1)) * Math.cos(deg2rad(lat2)) * Math.cos(deg2rad(theta));
    dist = Math.acos(dist);
    dist = rad2deg(dist);
    dist = dist * 1.609344 * 1000;        
    return (dist); // 134910.69784909734
}
    /* The function to convert decimal into radians */
private double deg2rad(double deg) {
    return (deg * Math.PI / 180.0);
}       
    /* The function to convert radians into decimal */
private double rad2deg(double rad) {
    return (rad * 180.0 / Math.PI);
}

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