Efficient cell navigation methods and applications of an aperture 4 hexagonal discrete global grid system

Abstract

Hexagonal discrete global grid systems are multi-resolution frameworks for earth data and have attracted much attention in research towards the next generation of geographic information system. Each resolution of the framework divides the earth into a hexagonal grid of cells and cell codes are used instead of Cartesian coordinates to organize and query data. Aperture (the ratio of cells between resolutions) 4 systems have structural advantages compared with aperture 3 and 7, but haven’t been fully developed. In this manuscript, we examine the aperture 4 hexagon hierarchy on uniform tiles (HHUT) and modify the coding method. We propose two HHUT-based cell navigation methods, one for regular and the other for irregular areas. We demonstrate the utility and high efficiency of the proposed methods in two applications. Results show that the proposed method for an irregular area is on average 400 times faster than DGGRID, the conventional library. The proposed method for a regular area is on average seven times faster than the hexagon lattice quad tree method and approaches that of H3. The modified coding and novel cell navigation methods proposed here indicate high efficiency, superior data organization and broad application prospects.