Spatial index for geo coordinates?

Posted by Michael Borgwardt on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Michael Borgwardt
Published on 2010-03-08T02:25:00Z Indexed on 2010/03/08 3:09 UTC
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Filed under:

geospatial

|

index

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data-structures

What kind of data structure could be used for an efficient nearest neighbor search in a large set of geo coordinates? With "regular" spatial index structures like R-Trees that assume planar coordinates, I see two problems (Are there others I have overlooked?):

Wraparound at the poles and the International Date Line
Distortion of distances near the poles

How can these factors be allowed for? I guess the second one could compensated by transforming the coordinates. Can an R-Tree be modified to take wraparound into account? Or are there specialized geo-spatial index structures?

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