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Main Authors: Plamper, Philipp, Köpcke, Hanna, Groß, Anika
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16487
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author Plamper, Philipp
Köpcke, Hanna
Groß, Anika
author_facet Plamper, Philipp
Köpcke, Hanna
Groß, Anika
contents Many complex real-world systems exhibit inherently intertwined temporal and spatial characteristics. Spatio-temporal knowledge graphs (STKGs) have therefore emerged as a powerful representation paradigm, as they integrate entities, relationships, time and space within a unified graph structure. They are increasingly applied across diverse domains, including environmental systems and urban, transportation, social and human mobility networks. However, modeling STKGs remains challenging: their foundations span classical graph theory as well as temporal and spatial graph models, which have evolved independently across different research communities and follow heterogeneous modeling assumptions and terminologies. As a result, existing approaches often lack conceptual alignment, generalizability and reusability. This survey provides a systematic review of spatio-temporal knowledge graph models, tracing their origins in static, temporal and spatial graph modeling. We analyze existing approaches along key modeling dimensions, including edge semantics, temporal and spatial annotation strategies, temporal and spatial semantics and relate these choices to their respective application domains. Our analysis reveals that unified modeling frameworks are largely absent and that most current models are tailored to specific use cases rather than designed for reuse or long-term knowledge preservation. Based on these findings, we derive modeling guidelines and identify open challenges to guide future research.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_16487
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Survey on Spatio-Temporal Knowledge Graph Models
Plamper, Philipp
Köpcke, Hanna
Groß, Anika
Social and Information Networks
Databases
Many complex real-world systems exhibit inherently intertwined temporal and spatial characteristics. Spatio-temporal knowledge graphs (STKGs) have therefore emerged as a powerful representation paradigm, as they integrate entities, relationships, time and space within a unified graph structure. They are increasingly applied across diverse domains, including environmental systems and urban, transportation, social and human mobility networks. However, modeling STKGs remains challenging: their foundations span classical graph theory as well as temporal and spatial graph models, which have evolved independently across different research communities and follow heterogeneous modeling assumptions and terminologies. As a result, existing approaches often lack conceptual alignment, generalizability and reusability. This survey provides a systematic review of spatio-temporal knowledge graph models, tracing their origins in static, temporal and spatial graph modeling. We analyze existing approaches along key modeling dimensions, including edge semantics, temporal and spatial annotation strategies, temporal and spatial semantics and relate these choices to their respective application domains. Our analysis reveals that unified modeling frameworks are largely absent and that most current models are tailored to specific use cases rather than designed for reuse or long-term knowledge preservation. Based on these findings, we derive modeling guidelines and identify open challenges to guide future research.
title A Survey on Spatio-Temporal Knowledge Graph Models
topic Social and Information Networks
Databases
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16487