Determine Latitude Longitude Direction

dgrafx · Corporal Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Posts: 13

Does anyone know of a formula to determine direction(N E S W) from one lat/lon point to another?
Thanks,

DM

chris · Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 8:35 pm Post subject:

The direction is the direction of the tangent vector to the shortest curve on earth's surface (a sphere) connecting the two points.

Such a curve is called a geodesic.

Read this:

Euler showed that the geodesics on a sphere are arcs of great circles.

Therefore, what you are looking for, is the great circle connecting the two points on the sphere.

Then, compute its tangent vector - it will show in the direction you want to compute.
_________________
Regards

Chris Karakas
www.karakas-online.de

chris · Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 8:53 pm Post subject:

The following are the mathematical formulas for calculating great circle distance and bearing:

Distance:

Where: D = Distance (in Nautical Miles) L1 = Original Latitude, L2 = Destination Latitude, lamda1 = Origin Longitude, lamda2 = Destination Longitude Latitude.

Direction:

Where: C = Initial Bearing (in degrees) D = Distance L1 = Original Latitude, L2 = Destination Latitude.

Example:
The distance and initial bearing from New York JFK, N 40° 38' 24" W 74° 46' 42" and London LHR, N 51° 28' 39" W 00° 27' 41" are:

See Distance and Direction (scroll down to the bottom of that page to see it).
_________________
Regards

Chris Karakas
www.karakas-online.de

dgrafx · Corporal Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Posts: 13

Thanks Chris,
Is this correct?
c=cos((sin(lat1)*sin(lat2)+cos(distance/60)/sin(distance/60)*cos(lat1)))
what is the -1 behind the cos? if significant, how do I calculate?
and the result I get, how would I translate to a general N S E W thing?
I've never studied any advanced math. I'm just an idiot web developer.
thanks,
DM

chris · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 12:45 am Post subject:

That -1 means "inverse", in our case: Inverse Cosine. Also known as acos, or arccos or Arcus Cosinus. In simple words: the arc (angle) that has that cosine as its cosine.

acos(x) is the "arc that has cosine x". Or, in mathematical words, cos(acos(x))=x.

Thus, you should read the above formula as

C = ACOS[....]

and NOT as

C = COS[....]

as you did. Just compute the example and, if you get the same result, then you know you are on the right way.

You get an angle in degrees as the result. I guess this will be the angle with a parallel cirle (the hoizontal lines in a map), from which you can derive the direction by a discretization in 45 degree intervalls: from 0 to 45 degrees, it is West to NorthWest, from 45 to 90, it is NW to North etc.

Are you programming an online navigation system?
_________________
Regards

Chris Karakas
www.karakas-online.de

dgrafx · Corporal Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Posts: 13

Hi,
Nothing so exotic as an online navigation system. I was sub-contracted to provide a dealer locator add-in that would be incorporated into a site that the contractor was updating for their client. I said 'no problem' thinking to myself that I just needed to package a couple blocks of code taken from one of my other applications, but I fell into a big pit - called microsoft access... it doesn't understand ACOS. The app needed to pick the 3 closest dealers to a users zip code. I could have looped through all the dealers and had the application calculate ACOS without involving access but then I'd have to order them myself. I probably could've devised a decent method of ordering by distance, but as soon as I started thinking about it it upset me enough to try to dig up a way to calculate acos within the query. I don't know enough about advanced math nor do I really have the time to learn. I've requested the contractor convince the client to upgrade to MySql for not just this reason but its just a better database + its free. If they don't upgrade I'll just loop through each dealer and devise a method of picking & ordering the closest 3. (personaly I prefer ms SqlServer). Anyway... Some of the inquires here have been just for personal curiosity. The calculations on the globe are kinda interesting. And my interest in specifying direction is that I want to incorporate it into a distance calculator for another app I've written.

I'm having difficulties with the direction calc. Sometimes I get an error: Parameter 1 of function ACos which is now "-1.05606309323" must be a real number between -1 and 1. So I'm wondering if it has to do with unit of measurement. I'm using miles for distance. Heres the Sql:
Select
3959 * ACOS(sin(zipcodes.latitude/57.3) * sin(dealers.latitude/57.3) +
cos(zipcodes.latitude/57.3) * cos(dealers.latitude/57.3) *
cos(dealers.longitude/57.3 - zipcodes.longitude/57.3)) AS Distance
Are these figures compatible with your formula? Did I miss something?

Thanks - DM

chris · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 10:32 am Post subject:

O.K., there are two questions there, let me pick one:

chris · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 11:15 am Post subject:

In case you didn't find it yourself, here is the short answer to your problem: Nearest Neighbour Search.
_________________
Regards

Chris Karakas
www.karakas-online.de

dgrafx · Corporal Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Posts: 13

You're such a math geek Chris. I've never known one before. That's cool, I'm a code geek.
I'm just starting in on the info you recomended. But just FYI, the client has about 50 dealers spread throughout the US and Canada. Even though I can understand what you're saying, from an advanced trig point of view - this is not accurate, still wouldn't such a formula be 'good enough' to pull up the 3 closet dealers by comparing distance on each one? The demo data so far seems accurate (enough anyway). Also I used similar methodology in a job search app giving the user the ability to seach only with a certain distance of their zipcode. That was also good enough.
I'll do some reading.
Thanks,

chris · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 9:42 pm Post subject:

As you will read in Nearest Neighbour Search, for only a few points (say 50), it may be fastest to do an exhaustive comparison of distances. However, since dealer offices don't change that fast (or do they?), you could just as well compute their Voronoi diagram once, then use it each time a nearest neighbour er... dealer Very Happy

query comes up. Of course, you will have to recompute it each time a dealer's position changes, or one is deleted or inserted. It all depends - for 50 dealers, Voronoi might be overkill, but for 5000 it will not.

You might check that Ranger software the book talks about in the link above. Didn't try it. But I would be interested in a report from a code geek Wink

on how it can be used in a situation like this (perhaps you can even use some of its code??).
_________________
Regards

Chris Karakas
www.karakas-online.de