My ArcGIS experience has been limited to working on large-scale maps with planar projections. I'm moving to a project in which I want to calculate the distance between pro sports facilities throughout the U.S. and their city's respective downtown/central business district (both defined as geocoded points).
My primary interest is in relative distances, and my question is whether using a geographic coordinate system for US map points and using "Near" to calculate geodesic distances between stadia and downtowns is a sound approach to avoiding issues that would arise from calculating distance based on a projection of the US?
Best Answer
I am afraid that the answer is no: what you mean to do is correct but it will not work like this in ArcGIS with Near.
From the help, you can read that :
in other words, if you use a geographic coordinate system, near will work as if it was a cartesian coordinate system.
You should instead use the Haversine approximation (see here ) or, better, the Vicenty's formula to find your solution (see @Michalis Avraam's answer)