Thomas Thelen

Thomas Thelen

Knowledge Graph Engineer

Publications

You can also find my papers on Google Scholar.

Journal Articles

The knowwheregraph: A large-scale geo-knowledge graph for interdisciplinary knowledge discovery and geo-enrichment

Published in arxiv, 2025

The KnowWhereGraph aims to address the challenge of data integration by building a large-scale, cross-domain, pre-integrated, FAIR-principles-based, and AI-ready data warehouse rooted in knowledge graphs. We highlight the design principles of KnowWhereGraph, emphasizing the roles of space, place, and time in bridging various data “silos”.

Recommended citation: Zhu, Rui, et al. "The knowwheregraph: A large-scale geo-knowledge graph for interdisciplinary knowledge discovery and geo-enrichment." arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.13874 (2025).
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villager: A framework for designing and executing agent-based models in R

Published in Journal of Open Source Software, 2022

Villager is an agent-based modeling framework: it prescribes a convention and interface for modelers to create and run agent-based models (ABM). The framework is aimed at researchers in the social sciences who are focused on modeling human populations.

Recommended citation: Thelen, Thomas, et al. "villager: A framework for designing and executing agent-based models in R." Journal of Open Source Software 7.79 (2022): 4562.
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Detailed Provenance Metadata from Statistical Analysis Software:{TaPP} Applications Track

Published in 13th International Workshop on Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP 2021), 2021

We have created a set of tools for automating the extraction of fine-grained provenance from statistical analysis software used for data management. Our tools create metadata about steps within programs and variables (columns) within data-frames in a way consistent with the ProvONE extension of the PROV model.

Recommended citation: Alter, George, et al. "Detailed Provenance Metadata from Statistical Analysis Software:{TaPP} Applications Track." 13th International Workshop on Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP 2021). 2021.
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Toward enabling reproducibility for data-intensive research using the whole tale platform

Published in Parallel Computing: Technology Trends, 2020

In this work we explore barriers and opportunities for extending the Whole Tale in-frastructure to facilitate reproducible data-intensive research at scale.

Recommended citation: Chard, Kyle, et al. "Toward enabling reproducibility for data-intensive research using the whole tale platform." Parallel Computing: Technology Trends. IOS Press, 2020. 766-778.
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KnowWhereGraph-Lite: A Perspective of the KnowWhereGraph

Published in Iberoamerican Knowledge Graphs and Semantic Web Conference, 2023

A paper on the perspectives of a lightweight graph approximation of KnowWhereGraph .

Recommended citation: Shimizu, C., et al.: Knowwheregraph-lite: a perspective of the knowwheregraph. In: Ortiz-Rodríguez, F., Villazón-Terrazas, B., Tiwari, S., Bobed, C. (eds.) KGSWC 2023. LNCS, vol. 14382, pp. 199–212. Springer, Cham (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47745-4
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Knowledge explorer: Exploring the 12-billion-statement KnowWhereGraph using faceted search (demo paper)

Published in Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, 2022

In this paper, we present Knowledge Explorer, an open-source faceted search interface that provides environmentally intelligent services for interactively browsing and navigating KnowWhereGraph.

Recommended citation: Liu, Zilong, et al. "Knowledge explorer: Exploring the 12-billion-statement KnowWhereGraph using faceted search (demo paper)." Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems. 2022.
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CPR-A Comprehensible Provenance Record for Verification Workflows in Whole Tale

Published in Provenance and Annotation of Data and Processes: 8th and 9th International Provenance and Annotation Workshop, IPAW 2020+ IPAW 2021, Virtual Event, July 19–22, 2021, Proceedings 8, 2021

The Comprehensible Provenance Record (CPR) Toolkit is a suite of tools for recording, storing, querying, and visualizing the provenance of artifacts produced by a run of a computational workflow.

Recommended citation: McPhillips, Timothy M., et al. "CPR-A Comprehensible Provenance Record for Verification Workflows in Whole Tale." Provenance and Annotation of Data and Processes: 8th and 9th International Provenance and Annotation Workshop, IPAW 2020+ IPAW 2021, Virtual Event, July 19–22, 2021, Proceedings 8. Springer International Publishing, 2021.
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Application of BagIt-serialized research object bundles for packaging and re-execution of computational analyses

Published in 2019 15th International Conference on eScience (eScience), 2019

In this paper we describe our experience adopting the Research Object Bundle (RO-Bundle) format with BagIt serialization (BagIt-RO) for the design and implementation of “tales” in the Whole Tale platform.

Recommended citation: Chard, Kyle, et al. "Application of BagIt-serialized research object bundles for packaging and re-execution of computational analyses." 2019 15th International Conference on eScience (eScience). IEEE, 2019.
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Science, containerized: Integrating provenance and compute environments with the Whole Tale

Published in American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2018, 2018

The Whole Tale project bridges this gap by enabling tight integration between analyses and the generation of provenance information and an executable description of the computational environment.

Recommended citation: Mecum, Bryce, et al. "Science, containerized: Integrating provenance and compute environments with the Whole Tale." AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts. Vol. 2018. 2018.