<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">AGILE-GISS</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>AGILE: GIScience Series</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">AGILE-GISS</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">AGILE GIScience Ser.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2700-8150</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/agile-giss-7-48-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>DGGS-Native Data Cubes: A Design Pattern for Scalable, Distortion-Aware Analytics</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zamudio-Monserratt</surname>
<given-names>Michael</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Uuemaa</surname>
<given-names>Evelyn</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0782-6740</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kmoch</surname>
<given-names>Alexander</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4386-4450</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>INCT/Odisseia, Observatory of Socio-Environmental Dynamics, University of Brasilia, Brazil</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Landscape Geoinformatics Lab, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Estonia</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>10</day>
<month>06</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>7</volume>
<elocation-id>48</elocation-id>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Michael Zamudio-Monserratt et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://agile-giss.copernicus.org/articles/7/48/2026/agile-giss-7-48-2026.html">This article is available from https://agile-giss.copernicus.org/articles/7/48/2026/agile-giss-7-48-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://agile-giss.copernicus.org/articles/7/48/2026/agile-giss-7-48-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://agile-giss.copernicus.org/articles/7/48/2026/agile-giss-7-48-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>The rapid growth of geospatial big data has intensified the need for efficient frameworks to store, process, and analyse large-scale, multidimensional datasets. Geospatial data cubes have emerged as a key paradigm for organising spatio-temporal information into analysis-ready structures, enabling scalable analytics across Earth observation and related domains.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This paper presents a synthesis-oriented analysis of recent mathematical and architectural advances in geospatial data cube infrastructures, with a particular focus on multidimensional indexing, sparse computation and compression, and spatial tessellation based on Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS). Rather than conducting a systematic review, the study integrates theoretical and system-level contributions to examine how these methods jointly address limitations of projection-dependent raster models, improve storage efficiency, and support consistent multi-resolution analysis.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We argue for DGGS-indexed data cubes, where the spatial dimension is treated as a first-class, hierarchical global grid identifier, serving as a unifying computational substrate that integrates multi-resolution spatial referencing with sparse tensor computation, thereby enabling globally consistent, scalable, and actionable geospatial analytics. This perspective clarifies their role as a foundational component for scalable, reproducible, and globally consistent geospatial analytics, while outlining key challenges and research directions for their operational adoption. By highlighting points of convergence between DGGS-based spatial referencing, cloud-native storage formats, and scalable computational strategies, the paper reframes geospatial data cubes not merely as data storage abstractions, but as integrated computational infrastructures.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="8"/></counts>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>