Discrete Global Grid Systems

Given the promises of geospatial AI and geospatial foundation models and the (maybe?) impending end of the spatial join¹, Discrete Global Grid Systems² have gained more attention over the last few months. You have probably encountered H3 developed by Uber³ starting in 2015, for example, or, more recently, S2⁴ or A5⁵.

Examples of Discrete Global Grid Systems (source: Landscape Geoinformatics Lab, University of Tartu, Estonia)

A while back, in episode 290, Luís Moreira de Sousa, Assistant Professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal, was a guest on the Geomob Podcast with Ed Freyfogle. The episode is a great introduction into DGGSs, their provenance, their use cases, and specific examples.

If you want to dive even deeper:

• Standardisation efforts by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) are under way.
• The Landscape Geoinformatics Lab of the University of Tartu in Estonia has a large collection of DGGS resources

Footnotes

1. Please allow some hyperbole.

2. DGGSs

3. Hexagon-based except for 12 pentagons (think: football/soccer ball) and using approximate sub-divisions.

4. Based on a cube projection and the Hilbert curve.

5. Based on irregularly-shaped pentagons.