I have two datasets, one of polygons and the other of points, both spread across the United States. Both have decimal degree coordinates in WGS 1984. I want to determine the distance from each polygon to the three nearest points in km. My initial approach was to use the Generate Nearest Table tool but because the inputs are in lat/long degrees, that is how the outputs are given.
This is a very similar question to one asked previously: Calculate distance in km to nearest points (given in lat/long) using ArcGIS Desktop and/or R? The difference is point to polygon vs. point to point. So I don't know how the code given in the answers would work. I'm not too familiar with R either so any desktop based solution would be more straightforward for me.
The Generate Nearest Table seems perfect for this it just doesn't work because of the lat/long coordinates I'm starting with. Should I reproject the datasets into something that would allow distance calculation in km?