Abstract
As the need for more broad-scale solutions to environmental problems is increasingly recognized, traditional hierarchical, government-led models of coordination are being supplemented by or transformed into more collaborative inter-organizational networks (i.e., collaboratives, coalitions, partnerships). As diffuse networks, such regional environmental planning and design (REPD) efforts often face challenges in sharing and using spatial and other types of information. Recent advances in semantic knowledge management technologies, such as knowledge graphs, have the potential to address these challenges. In this paper, we first describe the information needs of three multi-stakeholder REPD initiatives in the western USA using a list of 80 need-to-know questions and concerns. The top needs expressed were for help in tracking the participants, institutions, and information products relevant to the REDP’s focus. To address these needs, we developed a prototype knowledge graph based on RDF and GeoSPARQL standards. This semantic approach provided a more flexible data structure than traditional relational databases and also functionality to query information across different providers; however, the lack of semantic data expertise, the complexity of existing software solutions, and limited online hosting options are significant barriers to adoption. These same barriers are more acute for geospatial data, which also faces the added challenge of maintaining and synchronizing both semantic and traditional geospatial datastores.
Highlights
Authority for managing environmental issues in the USA is distributed across local, state, and federal agencies, requiring “vertical” collaboration across multiple organizational levels, and environmental problems often cross jurisdictional boundaries, requiring “horizontal” coordination across these boundaries as well [1]
These domains are handled by a single list of terms, but future development could link to domain-specific ontologies and knowledge graphs
In order to demonstrate the utility of the PPOp knowledge graph, we present a number of use cases below with specific competency questions
Summary
Authority for managing environmental issues in the USA is distributed across local, state, and federal agencies, requiring “vertical” collaboration across multiple organizational levels, and environmental problems often cross jurisdictional boundaries, requiring “horizontal” coordination across these boundaries as well [1]. Multi-stakeholder collaborations, which we will refer to as “regional environmental planning and design” (REPD) efforts, often arise from the identification of a particular resource problem, such as the cases reviewed in this paper concerning the management of wildfire, water quality, and biodiversity. Such natural resource issues are inevitably intertwined with other social, economic, and environmental considerations. Given this complexity, large spatial scale, and organizational diversity, it is no surprise that REDP efforts face challenges in acquiring, managing, and sharing the information they need. The final sections provide a discussion of our findings in relation to past and potential future work, and our summary conclusions
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