Random geographic coordinates (on land, avoid ocean)

Question

Any clever ideas on how to generate random coordinates (latitude / longitude) of places on Earth? Latitude / Longitude. Precision to 5 points and avoid bodies of water. <

Answer 1

This has being asked a long time ago and I now have the similar need. There are two possibilities I am looking into:

1. Define the surface ranges for the random generator.

Here it's important to identify the level of precision you are going for. The easiest way would be to have a very relaxed and approximate approach. In this case you can divide the world map into "boxes":

Each box has it's own range of lat lon. Then you first randomise to get a random box, then you randomise to get a random lat and random long within the boundaries of that box.

Precisions is of course not the best at all here... Though it depends:) If you do your homework well and define a lot of boxes covering most complex surface shapes - you might be quite ok with the precision.

2. List item

Some API to return continent name from coordinates OR address OR country OR district = something that WATER doesn't have. Google Maps API's can help here. I didn't research this one deeper, but I think it's possible, though you will have to run the check on each generated pair of coordinates and rerun IF it's wrong. So you can get a bit stuck if random generator keeps throwing you in the ocean.

Also - some water does belong to countries, districts...so yeah, not very precise.

For my needs - I am going with "boxes" because I also want to control exact areas from which the random coordinates are taken and don't mind if it lands on a lake or river, just not open ocean:)