What's the best way to calculate the distance formula around a central location using a radius in miles? We've typically been using a circular radius formula, but are considering using a plain square because it's faster and much more efficient.
Sometimes we'll need to be exact, so we'll use the circle, but other times we can just use the square for a faster calculation.
It sounds like you have an existing calculation, can you post it with a couple of examples of results?
Have to tackle this one next month, so was recently chatting to a gis person about this.
Apparently, the trick is to first work out the size (in either km or miles) of a 1 degree box around your centre point, as that will vary depending on where you are in the world.
e.g. Alaska very different to somewhere near equator, then use that to work out how many degrees, or 10ths 100ths etc to make your box. Can precalc a set of these if needed, depends on how accurate you need.