This was my second time presenting at the CCA Annual Conference, and it was another great opportunity to promote Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) and share ongoing research. My talk was part of Day 1, Session 3: Geographic Information Applications and Association Update. The presentation was titled “Analytical Operations for Terrain Data Modeled in Discrete Global Grid Systems.”
🎥 Watch the Recorded Presentation
Abstract
Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) have been increasingly adopted as the framework of multi-source geospatial data. Previous research largely studied the mathematical foundation, developed open-sourced DGGS libraries, and explored their application as integration platforms. This study investigated the analytical operations in a pure hexagonal DGGS environment, including descriptive statistics, topographical and hydrological analysis, and topographic indices based on modeled terrain data. Experiments across multiple resolutions were carried out in three areas with various roughness in Alberta, Canada. With five algorithms proposed to calculate slope gradient and aspect, the cell-based, pair-wise comparison showed strong positive relationships between the gradient resulted from various algorithms, while the aspect direction can vary among different approaches. The impact of the variation in these results can propagate to the flow routing grids, flow accumulation, and topographic indices production. Resolutions influenced the detection of elevation changes and the rate of changes, and the degree of such influence also depended on the roughness of the area. This research sets the stage for the analytical development of general DGGS and helps to bridge the gap between the existing DGGS implementations and DGGS-driven decision-making in the real world.
Thanks to the Canadian Cartographic Association for organizing the event and fostering a supportive space for advancing spatial research.