A Discrete Grid-Based Approach for Efficient Near-Optimal Coverage Selection in a Large-Scale Remote Sensing Image Dataset

Regional image coverage retrieval is a critical problem in large-scale remote sensing data processing. However, traditional vector topology-based methods suffer from rapidly increasing computational costs when handling massive and highly overlapping datasets. This paper proposes a coverage retrieval approach based on the Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS), which transforms geometric topological operations into grid-encoding set operations, thereby reconstructing the coverage computation process under a discrete spatial indexing framework. A heuristic greedy strategy is integrated to achieve efficient coverage selection. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed DGGS-based method achieves speedups ranging from approximately 1.5× to 11×, depending on dataset scale and coverage. Grid-level analysis indicates that level 7 grids generally provide a favorable balance between spatial accuracy and computational efficiency for near-complete coverage retrieval, whereas level 6 grids offer a more computationally efficient alternative for rapid coverage estimation and sparse-coverage scenarios, with only marginal accuracy loss. Furthermore, the method exhibits near-linear scalability with increasing data volume and maintains stable performance under incomplete coverage scenarios. The results confirm that DGGS-based discrete modeling significantly reduces computational complexity while preserving spatial reliability, providing an efficient and scalable solution for PB-scale remote sensing data processing.