TWO-PARTITION DISCRETE GLOBAL GRID SYSTEMS - A COMPARISON OF APPROACHES BASED ON ADJUSTED SPHERICAL CUBE AND CYLINDRICAL EQUIDISTANT PROJECTION

Abstract

The enormous volumes of geospatial data and the need to process and distribute them cry out for a unified framework that enables their efficient storage, analysis, and a high degree of interoperability. Discrete global grid systems provide such a framework by hierarchically tessellating cells to seamlessly partition and address the globe. Since they are usually based on a regular polyhedron, they partition the entire world into as many discrete data sets as the given polyhedron has sides. In this paper, we try to reduce the number of partitions to two, which is a minimum if we want to obtain spatially convex partitions without interruptions. Two approaches are presented, based on an adjusted spherical cube and an equidistant cylindrical projection. The distortions resulting from the application of these projections are compared and guidelines are presented to improve the quality of their implementation by reducing the distortion of the continental plates and making a better mapping to the WGS84 ellipsoid.