World Grid Square Data Reference Framework and its Potential Applications

Grid square statistics – a kind of spatial statistics – is useful for compiling, disseminating, and analyzing statistics regarding anonymization. We recently proposed a natural extension of the Japanese Industrial Standards for grid square code (JIS X0410) for use worldwide. The grid square approach can produce numerous types of statistics associated with any geographic location in the world, identify any type of grid square statistics, and analyze relationships among various types of grid square statistics. This paper proposes a World Grid Square data reference architecture to manage World Grid Square statistics in a big data analytics platform following the Big Data Reference Architecture. We identify data sources such as government statistics, satellite imagery, and point data from internet providers and show how to transform World Grid Square statistics and data from grid data, point data, and polygon data. We further propose a system for providing grid square statistics in a number of context-specific areas and demonstrate their application in a data visualization and analytics platform.