Patent ID: 8190649

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of updating information associated with spatially-related models, comprising: accessing, by one or more computer processors, a hierarchical multi-level index in a form of a quadtree structure having leaf nodes containing the information about a spatially-related model and non-leaf nodes storing other information about nodes related to the non-leaf nodes, wherein particular levels in the index are made up of nodes that represent geographic sub-quadrants of corresponding parent nodes in adjacent levels in the index; adding, by the one or more computer processors, the information about the spatially-related model at a leaf node in the index; and traversing, by the one or more computer processors, parent nodes of the leaf node toward a root node, and incrementing counts of nodes in a traversal path, wherein the leaf nodes and the non-leaf nodes in the index are in a coordinate system represented by a notation of (row, column, level), and traversing between the adjacent levels in the index comprises adding 1 to a current level, and multiplying a current position of each row and column by 2, wherein the current level and the current position are variables of a pointer in the index.