Abstract Codes with locality, also known as locally recoverable codes, allow for recovery of erasures using proper subsets of other coordinates. These subsets are typically of small cardinality to promote recovery using limited network traffic and other resources. Hierarchical locally recoverable codes allow for recovery of erasures using sets of other symbols whose sizes increase as needed to allow for recovery of more symbols. In this paper, we describe a hierarchical recovery structure arising from geometry in Reed–Muller codes and codes with availability from fiber products of curves. We demonstrate how the fiber product hierarchical codes can be viewed as punctured subcodes of Reed–Muller codes, uniting the two constructions. This point of view provides natural structures for local recovery with availability at each level in the hierarchy.

In this paper, we construct codes for local recovery of erasures with high availability and constant-bounded rate from the Hermitian curve. These new codes, called Hermitian-lifted codes, are evaluation codes with evaluation set being the set of $\mathbb{F}_{q^2}$-rational points on the affine curve. The novelty is in terms of the functions to be evaluated; they are a special set of monomials which restrict to low degree polynomials on lines intersected with the Hermitian curve. As a result, the positions corresponding to points on any line through a given point act as a recovery set for the position corresponding to that point.