Practical approach for modifying existing geocoding system from equal angular to equal area

Abstract

Geocoding systems are essential for the rapid processing of large volumes of spatial data. There are numerous geocoding systems, each of which divides the space into subspaces with a unique geometric shape and employs a different approach of creating its unique identifier - the geocode. The article's main goal is to demonstrate how existing equal angular geocoding system can be modified to become equal areas geocoding system. The research focuses on the main characteristics of equal angular geocoding systems. Although there are many geocoding systems available today, the study is limited to Geohash, one of the equal angular geocoding systems widely used in practice. We propose a novel approach called Hashgeo that has many practical implications. Many advantages (practical implications) of using cells with equal area have been identified, including: facilitating data comparison between cells of different latitudes, simplifying the process of visualizing data on an online map when creating so-called "heat maps", facilitating statistical analysis of data, preserving the "units per area" indicator when summarizing and aggregating data in a larger scale from data for smaller cells and others. The areas of the spherical segments and the cells within them are calculated using a suitable derived formula.

Keywords

• geocoding
• geographic information systems
• equal area geocoding
• geohash
• hashgeo