The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has approved the Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS) as OGC Abstract Specification.
The goal of DGGS is to enable rapid assembly of spatial data without the difficulties of working with projected coordinate reference systems. The OGC DGGS Abstract Specification standard defines the conceptual model and a set of rules for building highly efficient architectures for spatial data storage, integration and analytics.
More information you can find here: http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/2656
The open DGGS Abstract Specification is free to implement. You can view and download the standard from http://docs.opengeospatial.org/as/15-104r5/15-104r5.html