A binary heap is a special type of binary tree that satisfies the heap property, which means that each parent node is either greater than or equal to (in a max heap) or less than or equal to (in a min heap) its child nodes. This structure allows for efficient access to the highest or lowest value, making it useful for implementing priority queues. In a binary heap, the tree is usually represented as an array, where the parent-child relationships can be easily calculated using simple index formulas. This efficient organization enables quick insertion and deletion operations, typically taking logarithmic time, which is beneficial in various algorithms, such as Dijkstra's algorithm and Heap Sort.