About ORC’s Hexagonal Geography

ORC originally constructed a grid of hexagonal geographic areas to describe in detail the nature of foodstore catchments. The original grid had hexagonal areas just 500 metres across. Having seen the advantages we now use hexagonal geography for all of our catchment analysis for all types of retailing.

The advantages are:

  • stable geography. The size and location of a hex is permanent. Postal sector boundaries, on the other hand, are frequently redefined by the Post Office
  • regular shapes. A hex is a hex is a hex. Try and find two postal sectors which are the same size and shape
  • small scale geography. At the hex size of 500 metres across, there are 1.4 million covering the UK - 150 times more detail than postal sectors

The characteristics of small scale, areas of regular shape, makes visualising data so much easier. For example, it is possible to show where spend comes from and know that values displayed in each hex are on a comparable like for like basis - each hex has the same area. Click here to see a case study example.