Uber's H3: A Hexagonal Grid System for Geospatial Indexing
2025-03-09
H3, developed at Uber, is a discrete global grid system that indexes geographies into a hexagonal grid. Each hexagonal cell has a unique ID, allowing for fast joins across disparate datasets and aggregation at various levels of precision. H3 enables a range of grid-based algorithms and optimizations, including nearest neighbor search, shortest path calculations, gradient smoothing, and more, making it a powerful tool for geospatial data analysis.