2026-08-12 –, Room 3
Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) allow minimizing spatial distortions in geospatial image processing, among others. Here we present DGGS.jl, a Julia package to work with DGGS native data cubes using Zarr.jl and YAXArrays.jl. It transforms any raster image from a traditional projection into memory-efficient N-dimensional arrays, following one unified global coordinate system without overlapping tiles, e.g., for bounding box queries, spatial aggregation, or visualization in QGIS.
Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) tessellate the earth’s surface into zones of equal area and very similar shape, minimizing spatial distortions in geospatial data processing. DGGS are not only used for geocoding but also offer a highly efficient data structure by eliminating tile overlap compared to traditional grids like UTM used in many satellite missions.
The performance of operations on DGGS native data cubes is intrinsically linked to the cell index. Many real-world applications, such as visualization or convolutions, require efficient handling of higher-order neighbor queries based on spatial distances, motivating a multidimensional spatial index as coordinates in the n-dimensional array.
In response to these challenges, we introduce DGGS.jl (https://danlooo.github.io/DGGS.jl), a Julia package specifically developed to create and utilize DGGS native data cubes optimized for neighbor queries. Our package employs the DGGRID Q2DI index to store data on a grid based on the Icosahedral Snyder Equal Area projection, enabling compact and efficient data cube arrays. We have implemented methods to seamlessly convert raster data between geographic and Q2DI coordinates, access neighbor disks around a given cell, and visualize these data on a global scale. In addition, we developed an XYZ tile server, allowing us to view DGGS native data cubes in QGIS and in the browser. Finally, we applied DGGS.jl on a subset of the Sentinel-2 archive.
I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany. Originally coming from a bioinformatics background, I now work on software and data formats making geospatial data like satellite imagery less distorted.