DGGS: The New Digitally Friendly Format for Spatial Data
summary
An ISO/OGC-backed Discrete Global Grid System replaces lat/long pairs with equal-area nested cells indexed by a single-string identifier, letting areas be stored as compact one-dimensional arrays. Implementations (H3/ch3 for congestion pricing, libdggs, and commercial Pyxis/DGGS work from Calgary) show point-in-polygon and big-data spatial queries run orders of magnitude faster, support both raster and vector by treating points as cells, and are compact enough to embed simple geofencing logic in a browser—JavaScript reference implementations are still sparse.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction to DGGS
- 0:47Problems with flat maps
- 4:23Traditional coordinate systems
- 6:11What is a DGGS
- 9:21DGGS for vectors and rasters
- 13:36Simple spatial operators
- 17:42Web-based mapping applications
- 18:46Performance comparison
- 21:15JavaScript implementation
- 21:40GPS data conversion
- 22:44Flexibility in DGGS standards