Advancing digital earth modeling: Hexagonal multi-structural elements in icosahedral DGGS for enhanced geospatial data processing

Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGSs) employ uniform cells for hierarchical Earth surface representation. However, prevalent software systems stemming from DGGS only focus on grid centers and lack the modeling of vertices and edges, which hindering efficient geospatial data computation and analysis. Consequently, we propose a novel mathematical model for hexagonal centers, vertices and edges of an icosahedral DGGS and provide corresponding hierarchical indexing methods and conversion rules with respect to integer coordinates. The proposed method was incorporated into the open-source software DGGRID, thereby enhancing its capabilities by integrating data fusion into the computation framework and expanding its application scope. The results show that the introduction of multi-structural elements could lead to higher-precision modeling of raster and vector data. •Hexagonal multi-structural elements enhance Earth's surface modeling precision.•Integration of indexing and conversion rules improves geospatial data computation.•DGGRID implementation shows increased precision in raster and vector data modeling.•Addresses limitations in existing software for Earth observation data.•Pioneering approach expands geospatial data processing applications.