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| GeographicLib | |
|---|---|
| Name | GeographicLib |
| Author | Charles F. F. Karney |
| Latest release | 2.5 (example) |
| Programming language | C++ |
| Repository | GitHub |
| License | BSD |
GeographicLib. GeographicLib is a software library for geodesic, geocentric, geodetic, and geospatial computations maintained by Charles F. F. Karney and distributed via open-source channels. The project provides precise implementations of elliptic integrals, inverse and direct geodesic problems, and map projection routines used by researchers and engineers across organizations such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration, European Space Agency, United States Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Development and citation occur in venues including ACM, IEEE, SIAM, American Geophysical Union.
GeographicLib implements numerically robust algorithms for problems on the Earth and ellipsoids, addressing geodesic distance, azimuths, area calculations, and conversions between geodetic and geocentric coordinates. The library supports high-precision computation needed by projects at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, MIT, Caltech, Harvard University, and Stanford University. Its design emphasizes correctness for edge cases relevant to datasets from Landsat, Sentinel-2, GPS constellations, and surveying operations associated with institutions such as Ordnance Survey and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
GeographicLib includes routines for direct and inverse geodesic problems on ellipsoids, geodesic line traversal, area by polygon integration, and geocentric transformations; these functions support workflows at Esri, QGIS, Mapbox, and OpenStreetMap. The library provides implementations of geodesic calculations that are comparable to algorithms referenced in publications from NOAA, USGS, WMO, and IAG. Additional features include support for multiple map projections used in standards from EPSG, datum transformations relevant to NAD83 and WGS84, and utilities used in satellite tracking by groups such as SpaceX and Iridium Communications.
GeographicLib implements algorithms based on series expansions, Newton-Raphson solvers, and analytic integral evaluations. The core geodesic algorithms follow methods derived from classical work by Carl Friedrich Gauss, Adrien-Marie Legendre, and modern treatments influenced by papers presented at International Conference on Geodesy, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, and journals like Journal of Geodesy and Geophysical Research Letters. Numeric techniques draw on multiprecision strategies used in libraries such as MPFR, GMP, and rely on careful floating-point error analysis akin to work from Donald Knuth and William Kahan. Implementations are in C++ with attention to ISO standards from ISO/TC 211 and portability across platforms endorsed by POSIX and IEEE.
Bindings and interfaces exist for several languages and ecosystems, enabling integration with Python Software Foundation-based projects, Java applications, C# implementations on Microsoft .NET, and Ruby utilities. Python wrappers are commonly used within research groups at University of Cambridge, ETH Zurich, and Imperial College London for workflows that also employ NumPy, SciPy, and Pandas. Java and C# bindings facilitate deployment in enterprises such as Oracle Corporation and IBM, while command-line utilities are used in pipelines involving GDAL and PROJ by contributors to OSGeo projects.
GeographicLib is used for precise surveying by national agencies like Ordnance Survey and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for trajectory analysis in aerospace projects at NASA and ESA, and for oceanographic mapping by groups at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. In academia, researchers at MIT, Caltech, University of Oxford, and Princeton University use the library for modeling tectonic plate motions and satellite geodesy. Commercial users include ESRI, HERE Technologies, TomTom, and Garmin for route optimization and map matching, while open-source communities at OpenStreetMap and Mapbox integrate routines for distance calculations and projection conversions.
The project was created and primarily maintained by Charles F. F. Karney with contributions from collaborators and institutions such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and university research groups. Its development timeline includes releases coordinated with repositories hosted on GitHub and discussion threads in communities including Stack Overflow and mailing lists associated with OSGeo. The library’s design and correctness claims have been referenced in conference presentations at FOSDEM, Linux Foundation summits, and publications in Journal of Geodesy and proceedings of International Symposium on Geodesy and Geoinformation.
GeographicLib is distributed under a permissive BSD-like license facilitating use by commercial entities like Microsoft Corporation and academic organizations such as University of California campuses. Source code is available through public version control platforms used by projects hosted by GitHub and mirrored on archives that mirror other repositories used by CERN and archival services at Internet Archive. Packages and binaries are available for operating systems supported by distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora.