Find longest "straight" path between Point and Polygon

Question

Is it possible to find the longeststraight distance between a Point (latitude and longitude) and a Polygon in Shapely? I read it's possible to find the closest path, but i'm not sure about the longest.

Answer 1

Try the Hausdorff distance, which is returned by the g1.hausdorff_distance(g2) fuction:

from shapely.geometry import Polygon, Point
poly = Polygon([(-1, -1), (-2, 2), (4, 4), (4, -1), (-1, -1)])
p = Point(0, 0)
poly.hausdorff_distance(p)  # 5.656854249492381

Keep in mind, Shapely only works in Cartesian space. Your question asks about "latitude and longitude", so these distance units are in degrees. You'd need to project this into a suitable coordinate reference system (CRS) to get more conventional units of length. Furthermore, the definition of "straight path" changes depending on the choice of CRS.