Z-Index
Overview
Z-Index (also known as Morton code or Z-order) is a spatial indexing method that organizes geographic data into a hierarchical grid structure, often used to improve the efficiency of spatial queries and analysis. The Z-index maps multidimensional data to one dimension while preserving locality.
Key Concepts
Space-filling curve is a mathematical curve that visits all points in a grid. Morton code interleaves binary representations of X and Y coordinates. Locality preservation keeps nearby points close in the 1D ordering. Quadtree is a related hierarchical spatial index structure. Geohash is a similar concept using base32 encoding.
Applications
- Database indexing for spatial queries
- Efficient range queries in spatial databases
- Tile pyramids for web mapping
- Parallel processing of spatial data
Appendix
Created: 2025-12-13 | Modified: 2025-12-13