Biospytial

Biospytial is a modular open source knowledge engine designed to import, organise, analyse and visualise big spatial ecological datasets using the power of graph theory. It handles species occurrences and their taxonomic classification for performing ecological analysis on biodiversity and species distributions. The engine uses a hybrid graph-relational approach to store and access information. The data are linked with relationships that are stored in a graph database, while tabular and geospatial (vector and raster) data are stored in a relational database management system (RDBMS). The graph data structure provides a scalable design that eases the problem of merging datasets from different sources. The linkage relationships use semantic structures (objects and predicates) to answer scientific questions represented as complex data structures stored in the graph database.