Re: calculate distance in miles using Easting Northing coordinates.

[grep]

in reply to calculate distance in miles using Easting Northing coordinates.

It appears you can use Geo::Coordinates::OSGB for the conversion and Geo::Distance to calculate distance in miles.

As igelkott points out - A search for easting on CPAN will return Geo::Coordinates::OSGB as the first item. Geo::Distance I have used in the past and it works well.

[hawtin]

OSGB will only work for UK based locations surely. I missed where the questioner mentioned the country he wants to use, but I would have thought that UTM would be more likely to serve his purposes (assuming reasonably short distances are involved).

Update: I see that the original questioner has worked out the appropriate zone. For anyone else looking here let me explain what UTM is.

The US military needed a way to specify locations that would work wherever they operate (i.e. anywhere on the Earth). So what they did was split the world into 6 degree longitude slices and have a "Transverse Mercator" projection for each. So locations between -180 degrees and -174 degrees are in UTM Zone 1, -174 to -168 in Zone 2 and so on. New York, being at -74 is in Zone 18 (-78 to -72).

The other thing to notice is that there are different projections for locations North or South of the equator. So the final suggestion would be to use the zone "UTM18N"

[Anonymous Monk]

Thanks all. The country that I need miles for is U.S. I'll check out both Geo::* and UTM. (oops I forgot totally about CPAN... sorry.. and thanks once again everyone!!)

[Anonymous Monk]

I took a look at UTM and Geo::Coordinates. For UTM, it is looking for zones. How would I find what zone NY, NJ,PA and CT fall under? Unfortunately, I did not get original shape file, all I have is information, with earting and northing values given. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!!

[Anonymous Monk]

I found the UTM zone information for the data file that I am using : http://jmaps.dnr.state.mn.us/mdreporter/cl_full_record.jsp?clid=305 When I use zone as 15, in Geo::Coordinates::UTM, I get following error message: UTM zone(5) invalid. Thanks once again for help!!!

[Anonymous Monk]

Doing more search on the internet, found following location which let me use the information I have and convert it for me. In case anyone else might be looking for this: http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/UsefulData/HowUseExcel.HTM Thanks everyone for help and time!