System concept and development by: Tony Rees Divisional Data Centre CSIRO Marine Research, Australia c-squares - a new method for representing, querying, displaying and exchanging dataset spatial extents

bounding rectangle representation actual sampling points (= true dataset spatial extent)

gridded representation of same (=basis for c-squares)

… expressible as string of cell codes (labels) e.g. 3013:497|3111:468|3111:478|3111:479| 3111:488|3111:489|3111:499|3112:122| 3112:123|3112:131|3112:132| (etc.) + can send to custom mapper to generate map on-the-fly : gridded representation alone (real example is at finer resolution, i.e. 0.5 x 0.5 degree squares)

spatial searching is then a text match process, e.g.: does “3111:489” (or “3111:4”) occur in the text string 3013:497|3111:468|3111:478|3111:479|3111:488|3111:489|3111:499|3112:122| 3112:123|3112:131|3112:132| (etc.)

The matching mechanism can be hidden from the user, e.g. providing a point-and-click interface:

if c-squares references are explicit in www-displayed metadata, a standard search engine can even be used to do the spatial searching:

c-squares representation is applicable to many dataset types, e.g.... satellite swath footprint administrative / topographic region predicted species distribution

c-squares website ( gives more information on... c-squares rationale and specification v. 1 c-squares nomenclature connecting to the c-squares mapper sample c-squares enabled metadata records on-line lat/long - to - c-squares converter example code for doing such conversions, in Java, ColdFusion, and PL/SQL instructions for linking to the c-squares mapper demonstration materials (PPT presentation, explanatory poster) links to applications using c-squares including: CSIRO’s “MarLIN” and “CAAB” systems OBIS (USA) FishBase (International)