Manipulate Data

Explore the application of feature engineering techniques on geospatial data using geopy.

Formats of the geographic coordinate system

There are different formats for displaying latitude and longitude coordinates, like degrees minutes seconds (DMS) or decimal degrees (DD). The following table shows the coordinates in decimal format:

Decimal Degrees Format

Store

lat

long

StoreA

55.833572

37.640837

StoreB

55.801166

37.811811

At the equator, each additional decimal place in the coordinates represents a smaller distance. As a rough estimate, at the equator, each decimal place is roughly equivalent to 11.1 meters. In other words, each decimal place corresponds to approximately 11.1 meters in distance or roughly 0.0001 degrees. With six decimal places, the level of precision is so fine that it can distinguish locations as close as 0.11 meters at the equator.

Degree Precision

Decimal Places

Decimal Degrees (DD)

Distance

Object that can be uniquely identified at this scale

0

1.0

111km

Country or region

2

0.01

1.11km

Town or village

5

0.00001

1.11m

Individual houses

6

0.000001

0.11m

Individual humans

In general, a level of precision greater than six decimal places in decimal degrees is unlikely to be necessary for most applications, as this ...