haversine: Haversine great circle distance

In spatialrisk: Calculating Spatial Risk

Haversine great circle distance

Description

Calculates the shortest distance between two points on the Earth's surface using the Haversine formula, also known as the great-circle distance or "as the crow flies".

Usage

haversine(lat_from, lon_from, lat_to, lon_to, r = 6378137)

Arguments

lat_from	Numeric. Latitude(s) of the starting point(s) in decimal degrees (EPSG:4326).
lon_from	Numeric. Longitude(s) of the starting point(s) in decimal degrees (EPSG:4326).
lat_to	Numeric. Latitude(s) of the destination point(s) in decimal degrees (EPSG:4326).
lon_to	Numeric. Longitude(s) of the destination point(s) in decimal degrees (EPSG:4326).
r	Numeric. Radius of the Earth in meters (default = 6378137).

Details

The Haversine ('half-versed-sine') formula was published by R.W. Sinnott in 1984, although it has been known for much longer.

This function is fully vectorized: if multiple coordinates are supplied, it returns a distance for each pair of points.

Value

A numeric vector with distances in the same unit as r (default in meters).

Author(s)

Martin Haringa

References

Sinnott, R.W, 1984. Virtues of the Haversine. Sky and Telescope 68(2): 159.

Examples

# Single pair
haversine(53.24007, 6.520386, 53.24054, 6.520386)

# Vectorized usage
lat_from <- c(53.24, 52.37)
lon_from <- c(6.52, 4.90)
lat_to   <- c(48.85, 51.92)
lon_to   <- c(2.35, 4.48)
haversine(lat_from, lon_from, lat_to, lon_to)

spatialrisk documentation built on Sept. 14, 2025, 5:08 p.m.