This post is a continuation of Spatial Index: Grid Systems where we’ll set the muse for tessellation and head into the small print of Uber H3
Tessellation or tiling is the strategy of covering/dividing an area into smaller, non-overlapping shapes that fit together perfectly without gaps or overlaps. In spatial indexing, tessellation is used to interrupt down the Earth’s surface into manageable units for efficient data storage, querying, and evaluation.
The rationale behind why a geographical grid system (Tessellation system) is obligatory: The actual world is cluttered with various geographical elements, each natural and man-made, none of which follow any consistent structure. To perform geographic algorithms or analyses on it, we want a more abstract form.
Maps are a very good start and are essentially the most common abstraction, with which most persons are familiar. Nevertheless, maps still contain all types of inconsistencies. This calls for a grid system, which takes the cluttered geographic space and provides a more clean and structured mathematical space, making it much easier to perform computations and queries.
