What is the GeoBase File System (GBFS)?
The GeoBase file system (or GBFS) is a methodology of storing spatial data for optimal performance in geospatial or location-based applications.
GBFS takes 3rd party spatial data sets - such as street data, building outlines, POIs - and compresses the information through a bit-encoding process. This process is lossless - meaning the resulting data set retains all of the information in the source data. For the US & Canada, the source SHP files are ~20 GB in size; the GeoBase compile process yields a 1.8GB GBFS file that retains all contained data.
GBFS also includes spatial indexes so that the data sets can be quickly searched by mapping engines, geocoders and general spatial queries.
Published, May 17th 2009, 20:21