How do I create a circle with latitude, longitude and radius with GeoTools?

Question

Right now I have:

Polygon circle = geometryBuilder.circle(
myLong,
myLat, 
radiusInMeters, 10);

And it creates (with lat=28.456306, long=-16.292034 and radius=500) a nonsense polygon with huge latitudes and longitudes, such as:

POLYGON ((483.678055 28.482505000000003, 388.1865521874737 -265.4101211462366, 138.1865521874737 -447.04575314757676, -170.8304421874737 -447.0457531475768, -420.8304421874737 -265.41012114623663, -516.321945 28.482504999999943, -420.83044218747375 322.3751311462365, -170.8304421874738 504.01076314757677, 138.18655218747358 504.0107631475768, 388.18655218747364 322.3751311462367, 483.678055 28.482505000000003))

I expected to have ten pairs of coordinates with lat's and long's nearby the center point I supplied.

Any help would be more than helpful. Thanks in advance!

EDIT

In addition to @iant 's answer, I had to create a Point as a Feature

//build the type
SimpleFeatureType TYPE = null;
try {
    TYPE = DataUtilities.createType("", "Location", "locations:Point:srid=4326," + "id:Integer" // a
            // number
            // attribute
            );
} catch (Exception e1) {
    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
    e1.printStackTrace();
}

SimpleFeatureBuilder featureBuilder = new SimpleFeatureBuilder(TYPE);
GeometryFactory geometryFactory = JTSFactoryFinder.getGeometryFactory();
com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.Point point = geometryFactory.createPoint(
        new Coordinate(
                currentDevicePosition.getLongitude(), 
                currentDevicePosition.getLatitude()
                )
        );
featureBuilder.add(point);
SimpleFeature feature = featureBuilder.buildFeature( "fid.1" ); // build the 1st feature

as explained in iant's Gist here: https://gitlab.com/snippets/17558 and here: http://docs.geotools.org/, oh, and also I was missing a dependency as explained here SchemaException in java

Answer 1

There are two solutions to this:

1. Convert the radius in meters to degrees and treat the problem as a planar problem

2. Convert the lat/lon point to meters, calculate the circle in a locally planar projection and reproject back to lat/lon.

For 1 you could do something like which will be fine for small radii near the equator:

GeodeticCalculator calc = new  GeodeticCalculator(DefaultGeographicCRS.WGS84);
  calc.setStartingGeographicPoint(point.getX(), point.getY());
  calc.setDirection(0.0, 10000);
  Point2D p2 = calc.getDestinationGeographicPoint();
  calc.setDirection(90.0, 10000);
  Point2D p3 = calc.getDestinationGeographicPoint();

  double dy = p2.getY() - point.getY();
  double dx = p3.getX() - point.getX();
  double distance = (dy + dx) / 2.0;
  Polygon p1 = (Polygon) point.buffer(distance);

I'll show some code for the second as it is more general (i.e. it works better and for a better range of radii).

First you need to find a local projection, GeoTools provides a "pseudo" projection AUTO42001,x,y which is a UTM projection centred at X,Y:

public SimpleFeature bufferFeature(SimpleFeature feature, Measure<Double, Length> distance) {
    // extract the geometry
    GeometryAttribute gProp = feature.getDefaultGeometryProperty();
    CoordinateReferenceSystem origCRS = gProp.getDescriptor().getCoordinateReferenceSystem();

    Geometry geom = (Geometry) feature.getDefaultGeometry();
    Geometry pGeom = geom;
    MathTransform toTransform, fromTransform = null;
    // reproject the geometry to a local projection
    if (!(origCRS instanceof ProjectedCRS)) {

      double x = geom.getCoordinate().x;
      double y = geom.getCoordinate().y;

      String code = "AUTO:42001," + x + "," + y;
      // System.out.println(code);
      CoordinateReferenceSystem auto;
      try {
        auto = CRS.decode(code);
        toTransform = CRS.findMathTransform(DefaultGeographicCRS.WGS84, auto);
        fromTransform = CRS.findMathTransform(auto, DefaultGeographicCRS.WGS84);
        pGeom = JTS.transform(geom, toTransform);

      } catch (MismatchedDimensionException | TransformException | FactoryException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
      }

    }

So now pGeom is our point in metres. Buffering it is now easy

  Geometry out = bufferFeature(pGeom, distance.doubleValue(SI.METER)); 

then we project back to WGS84 (lat/lon) using the reverse transform we looked up earlier:

  retGeom = JTS.transform(out, fromTransform); 

There is then a little messing around to change the feature type to reflect the fact we are returning a polygon instead of a Point. The full code is in this gist.

When I run it I get the following output:

POINT (10.840378413128576 3.4152050343701745)
POLYGON ((10.84937634426605 3.4151876838951822, 10.849200076653755 3.413423962919184, 10.84868480171117 3.4117286878605766, 10.847850322146979 3.4101670058279794, 10.846728706726902 3.4087989300555464, 10.845363057862208 3.407677033830687, 10.843805855306746 3.406844430298736, 10.84211693959797 3.406333115754347, 10.840361212705258 3.4061627400701946, 10.838606144204721 3.4063398515107184, 10.836919178768184 3.4068576449605277, 10.835365144548726 3.4076962232621035, 10.834003762019957 3.408823361646906, 10.832887348980522 3.410195745914279, 10.832058809914859 3.411760636805914, 10.831549986992338 3.4134578966399034, 10.831380436105858 3.4152223003379722, 10.831556675029052 3.416986042039048, 10.832071932633442 3.4186813409639054, 10.832906408849936 3.4202430463705085, 10.834028035422469 3.4216111414662183, 10.835393708241908 3.422733050021835, 10.836950943907517 3.4235656570147763, 10.838639896841123 3.424076965623486, 10.840395659406198 3.4242473268789406, 10.842150756595839 3.4240701947133396, 10.843837739370569 3.4235523773972796, 10.845391776937724 3.4227137757216988, 10.846753148314034 3.4215866180136185, 10.847869537398722 3.4202142214154887, 10.848698043354238 3.4186493270628633, 10.849206829051935 3.4169520731645546, 10.84937634426605 3.4151876838951822))