Calculating Geographic Distance: Concepts and Methods
Frank J. Ivis · 2006
Calculating the distance between point locations is often an important component of many forms of spatial analysis in business and research. Although specialized software is available to perform this function, the power and flexibility of Base SAS® makes it easy to compute a variety of distance measures. An added advantage is that these measures can be customized according to specific user requirements and seamlessly incorporated with other SAS code. This paper outlines the basic concepts and methods involved in calculating geographic distance. Topics include distance calculations in two dimensions, considerations when dealing with latitude and longitude, measuring spherical distance, and map projections. In addition, several queries and calculations based on distances are also demonstrated.