About Expeditia

Research expeditions on Wikidata, with itineraries and natural history specimens.

What is Expeditia?

Expeditia aggregates data about scientific and research expeditions from three open data sources — Wikidata, GBIF, and Bionomia — and presents them as interactive maps with chronological itineraries and natural history specimen records.

For each expedition you can explore the route on a map, browse the participants, and see the specimens collected — with links back to the original records in GBIF.

A previous version of Expeditia is still available at expeditia.info/old for reference.

Where does the data come from?
Wikidata

Provides expedition metadata (name, dates, description), the itinerary (start, via and end points with coordinates), and the list of participants. Expeditions are identified as instances of Q366301 (expedition).

GBIF

Provides natural history specimen occurrence records. Specimens are linked to expeditions either via the Wikidata property P11146 (GBIF occurrence ID), or by matching the expedition's Wikidata QID against GBIF's eventID and parentEventID fields.

Bionomia

Acts as a broker between collectors (identified by Wikidata QIDs / ORCID) and GBIF specimen records. Volunteers use Bionomia to attribute specimens to the people who collected or identified them. Expeditia queries Bionomia to discover which GBIF specimens are attributed to each expedition participant, then retrieves and enriches those records directly from GBIF, filtering by the expedition date range.

How to add an expedition

An expedition appears in Expeditia when it meets the following conditions:

  • It exists in Wikidata as an instance of Q366301 (expedition)
  • It has at least a label and ideally start/end dates and participants

Once the Wikidata entry exists, you can add it directly from the Expeditions page using the + Add QID button and entering the Wikidata QID (e.g. Q1564366).

How to get specimens to appear

For specimen records from GBIF to be associated with an expedition, one of the following must be true:

  • The Wikidata item for the expedition has the property P11146 (GBIF occurrence ID) linking directly to specimen records
  • GBIF occurrence records have the expedition's Wikidata QID in their eventID or parentEventID field
  • A participant has an Wikidata QID / ORCID and their specimens are attributed in Bionomia, with event dates that fall within the expedition's date range
How often is data updated?

Expeditia runs an automatic sync via a scheduled task. You can also trigger a manual sync for any expedition or person using the Sync button on their respective pages.

WikiProject

Expeditia is developed in the context of the Wikidata Research Expeditions WikiProject, which aims to document scientific and research expeditions in Wikidata and make their data more accessible.

Licence & citation

Data is made available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Individual contents are licensed under the Database Contents License (DbCL).

Santos, Joaquim (0000-0002-2160-4968) (2023–2026) Expeditia: Research Expeditions on Wikidata with itineraries. https://www.expeditia.info

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