The KnowWhereGraph Ontology
This work provides a foundational schema for integrating diverse geospatial data, addressing challenges in domains such as agriculture and humanitarian aid, but it is incremental as it builds on existing knowledge graph and ontology practices.
The paper introduces the ontology serving as the schema for KnowWhereGraph, a large publicly available geospatial knowledge graph, detailing its design, development methodology, and deployment to support applications in areas like food security and disaster response.
KnowWhereGraph is one of the largest fully publicly available geospatial knowledge graphs. It includes data from 30 layers on natural hazards (e.g., hurricanes, wildfires), climate variables (e.g., air temperature, precipitation), soil properties, crop and land-cover types, demographics, and human health, various place and region identifiers, among other themes. These have been leveraged through the graph by a variety of applications to address challenges in food security and agricultural supply chains; sustainability related to soil conservation practices and farm labor; and delivery of emergency humanitarian aid following a disaster. In this paper, we introduce the ontology that acts as the schema for KnowWhereGraph. This broad overview provides insight into the requirements and design specifications for the graph and its schema, including the development methodology (modular ontology modeling) and the resources utilized to implement, materialize, and deploy KnowWhereGraph with its end-user interfaces and public query SPARQL endpoint.