Knowledge graphs (KGs) are a novel paradigm for the representation, retrieval, and integration of data from highly heterogeneous sources. Within just a few years, KGs and their supporting technologies have become a core component of modern search engines, intelligent personal assistants, business intelligence, and so on. Interestingly, despite large-scale data availability, they have yet to be as successful in the realm of environmental data and environmental intelligence. In this paper, we will explain why spatial data require special treatment, and how and when to semantically lift environmental data to a KG. We will present our KnowWhereGraph that contains a wide range of integrated datasets at the human-environment interface, introduce our application areas, and discuss geospatial enrichment services on top of our graph. Jointly, the graph and services will provide answers to questions such as "what is here," "what happened here before," and "how does this region compare to . . . " for any region on earth within seconds.

Knowledge graphs (KGs) are a novel paradigm for the representation, retrieval, and integration of data from highly heterogeneous sources. Within just a few years, KGs and their supporting technologies have become a core component of modern search engines, intelligent personal assistants, business intelligence, and so on. Interestingly, despite large-scale data availability, they have yet to be as successful in the realm of environmental data and environmental intelligence. In this paper, we will explain why spatial data require special treatment, and how and when to semantically lift environmental data to a KG. We will present our KnowWhereGraph that contains a wide range of integrated datasets at the human–environment interface, introduce our application areas, and discuss geospatial enrichment services on top of our graph. Jointly, the graph and services will provide answers to questions such as “what is here,” “what happened here before,” and “how does this region compare to …” for any region on earth within seconds.

Wikibase -which is the software underlying Wikidata -is a powerful platform for knowledge graph creation and management. However, it has been developed with a crowd-sourced knowledge graph creation scenario in mind, which in particular means that it has not been designed for use case scenarios in which a tightly controlled high-quality schema, in the form of an ontology, is to be imposed, and indeed, independently developed ontologies do not necessarily map seamlessly to the Wikibase approach. In this paper, we provide the key ingredients needed in order to combine traditional ontology modeling with use of the Wikibase platform, namely a set of axiom patterns that bridge the paradigm gap, together with usage instructions and a worked example for historical data.