Does anybody know a about an R package or Python library able to calculate shortest LAND distance between two points at different geographical coordinates?
GeoPy is a good Python library for calculating distances between coordinates. Could you be more specific? Are you only interested in the straight-line distance or are you interested in the distance traveled using roads? Is the topography a factor?
Umm, lots of interesting answers. Thanks to all of you.
Sorry I wasn't more specific. I need to estimate distances between two geographical points avoiding water bodies as the mediterranean sea for example. So I meant land distance as the opposite of land+sea distance or as-the-crow-flies distance.
In this context I guess road distance works fine as a proxy. I found this thread about it that was very useful http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16863018/getting-driving-distance-between-two-points-lat-lon-using-r-and-google-map-ap