Calculating distances between all possible combinations of lats and longs

Question

I can't get the below code to work. I'm trying to calculate the distances between all possible combinations of lats and longs in my data set.

Sample input data I'll use:

p <- data.frame(lat=runif(6,-90,90), lon=runif(6,-180,180) );

I can't get the below code to work. The distance function doesn't work, so I tried distm , but that also gave me an error message. The error message is listed below the code.

d <- setNames(do.call(rbind.data.frame, 
                      combn(1:nrow(p), 2, simplify = FALSE)), 
              c('p1','p2'));
d$dist <- sapply(1:nrow(d), function(r){
    distance(p$lat[d$p1[r]], p$lat[d$p2[r]], p$lon[d$p1[r]], p$lon[d$p2[r]])
})

d$dist <- sapply(1:nrow(d), function(r){
    distm(p$lat[d$p1[r]], p$lat[d$p2[r]], p$lon[d$p1[r]], p$lon[d$p2[r]])
})

#> Error in distm(p$lat[d$p1[r]], p$lat[d$p2[r]], p$lon[d$p1[r]], p$lon[d$p2[r]]) : 
#>  unused argument (p$lon[d$p2[r]])

Answer 1

geosphere::distHaversine (and most of the other distance functions) is vectorized, so you can call it on all the pairs at once. Putting it all into a nice data.frame,

p <- data.frame(lat = runif(6, -90, 90), 
                lon = runif(6, -180, 180))

# get row indices of pairs
row_pairs <- combn(nrow(p), 2)

# make data.frame of pairs
df_dist <- cbind(x = p[row_pairs[1,],], 
                 y = p[row_pairs[2,],])
# add distance column by calling distHaversine (vectorized) on each pair
df_dist$dist <- geosphere::distHaversine(df_dist[2:1], df_dist[4:3])

df_dist
#>          x.lat      x.lon      y.lat      y.lon     dist
#> 1   -10.281070 -156.30519  -7.027720 -104.76897  5677699
#> 1.1 -10.281070 -156.30519 -51.142344 -100.99517  6750255
#> 1.2 -10.281070 -156.30519  -3.979805 -141.43436  1785251
#> 1.3 -10.281070 -156.30519 -21.239130  -65.97719  9639637
#> 1.4 -10.281070 -156.30519  66.292704 -154.52851  8525401
#> 2    -7.027720 -104.76897 -51.142344 -100.99517  4923176
#> 2.1  -7.027720 -104.76897  -3.979805 -141.43436  4075742
#> 2.2  -7.027720 -104.76897 -21.239130  -65.97719  4459657
#> 2.3  -7.027720 -104.76897  66.292704 -154.52851  9085777
#> 3   -51.142344 -100.99517  -3.979805 -141.43436  6452943
#> 3.1 -51.142344 -100.99517 -21.239130  -65.97719  4502520
#> 3.2 -51.142344 -100.99517  66.292704 -154.52851 13833468
#> 4    -3.979805 -141.43436 -21.239130  -65.97719  8350236
#> 4.1  -3.979805 -141.43436  66.292704 -154.52851  7893225
#> 5   -21.239130  -65.97719  66.292704 -154.52851 12111227

Alternatively, you can use geosphere::distm , which gives you a distance matrix, which contains the same data in a different format:

geosphere::distm(p[, 2:1])
#>         [,1]    [,2]     [,3]    [,4]     [,5]     [,6]
#> [1,]       0 5677699  6750255 1785251  9639637  8525401
#> [2,] 5677699       0  4923176 4075742  4459657  9085777
#> [3,] 6750255 4923176        0 6452943  4502520 13833468
#> [4,] 1785251 4075742  6452943       0  8350236  7893225
#> [5,] 9639637 4459657  4502520 8350236        0 12111227
#> [6,] 8525401 9085777 13833468 7893225 12111227        0

As described by ?distHaversine , distances are in meters. Convert as you like. Also note that geosphere's functions take lon/lat, not lat/lon, so the columns need to be reversed to work.