Cesar Gonzalez-Perez

• Researcher in Semantic Technologies and Cultural Heritage
• Researcher at Spanish National Research Council

Conceptual models represent the world, but the world changes over time, and is different, to some extent, depending on who you ask. To cater for these aspects, conceptual models must address the representation of temporality and subjectivity. Although some work has been done to incorporate these aspects into conceptual modelling languages, no mains...

El proyecto PLANTCRAFT-Plantas, artesanos y configuración del paisaje desde la Edad del Bronce hasta la época romana en el Noroeste de la Península Ibérica (CNS2023-144343), ttiene como objetivo identificar la manera en la que se obtuvieron, atendieron y manejaron las plantas utilizadas como materia prima en las artesanías vegetales entre la Edad d...

Language technologies are gaining momentum as textual information saturates social networks and media outlets, compounded by the growing role of fake news and disinformation. In this context, approaches to represent and analyse public speeches, news releases, social media posts and other types of discourses are becoming crucial. Although there is a...

Now we reach the end of the book. Over 13 chapters, we have described a number of conceptual approaches and computational techniques for discourse and argumentation analysis in archaeology. Our aim has been to offer a consolidated and integrated view of various works and research lines, which are often found scattered across different fields. By co...

Argumentation-oriented discourse analysis usually focuses on what is being said and how, following the text under analysis quite literally, and paying little attention to the things in the world to which the text refers. However, to perform argumentation-oriented discourse analysis, one must assume certain conceptualisations by the author in order...

Vagueness is an intriguing topic, especially in the humanities. It has been treated as a problem that contaminates information and makes research harder, but also as an expression of human subjectivity that enriches our accounts of the world. Vagueness is studied by philosophers, treated by computer scientists, and used by archaeologists intentiona...

A menudo es necesario clasificar documentos asignándoles un tema de entre una serie de opciones predefinidas. Esta labor suele ser realizada manualmente, mediante la lectura del documento por parte de un especialista. Este proceso manual es tedioso, requiere tiempo y recursos, y es propenso a sesgos y preferencias de cada especialista. Como alterna...

Language technologies are gaining momentum as textual information saturates social networks and media outlets, compounded by the growing role of fake news and disinformation. In this context, approaches to represent and analyse discourses are becoming crucial. Although there is a large body of literature on text-based machine learning, it tends to...

Most of the new knowledge about our past that is generated in cultural heritage disciplines is produced in non-structured forms, such as project reports, monographs, or research papers. This proliferation of cultural heritage knowledge in textual discourse form requires support for information structuration and extraction of the semantic relations...

This challenge is formulated in terms of “humanities in transition,” that is, their approach and articulation in the face of the changes they must undergo to achieve the social weight that, due to their intrinsic relevance, should correspond to them. Faced with these situations that would demand a reinforcement in research and dissemination in dive...

El presente trabajo, que constituye parte de la tesis doctoral de la primera autora, plantea una propuesta de medición de la calidad de los datos arqueológicos a través de la gestión de la vaguedad, concretamente de tres variables: incertidumbre, imprecisión e inexactitud. Si tenemos presente que el dato arqueológico es parcial desde su origen, val...

Argumentation-oriented discourse analysis usually focuses on what is being said and how, following the text under analysis quite literally, and paying little attention to the things in the world to which the text refers. However, to perform argumentation-oriented discourse analysis, one must assume certain conceptualisations by the speaker in order...

Junto con César González-Pérez (Incipit CSIC), estamos llevando a cabo un estudio sobre la percepción de la vaguedad en textos arqueológicos. Para ello, pedimos la colaboración de arqueólogos, historiadores, y otros profesionales de áreas cercanas para rellenar dos cuestionarios: Parte 1: http://ow.ly/p6bd50ByUmC Parte 2: http://ow.ly/gZ0550ByU...

Digital humanities are often described in terms of humanistic work being carried out with the aid of digital tools, usually computer-based [...]

Research in digital humanities involves the need for conscious and explicit handling of data uncertainty. Recently, some initiatives have highlighted the importance of considering this uncertainty from the conceptual model to the final phases of implementation of software tools. Although the conceptual proposals for handling data uncertainty in the...

Anthropological, archaeological, and forensic studies situate enforced disappearance as a strategy associated with the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–1985), leaving hundreds of persons without identity or cause of death identified. Their forensic reports are the only existing clue for people identification and detection of possible crimes as...

Research in the digital humanities often involves vague information, either because our objects of study lack clearly defined boundaries, or because our knowledge about them is incomplete or hypothetical, which is especially true in disciplines about our past (such as history, archaeology, and classical studies). Most techniques used to represent d...

Requirements for the analysis, interpretation and reuse of information are becoming more and more ambitious as we generate larger and more complex datasets. This is leading to the development and widespread use of information about information, often called metainformation (or metadata) in most disciplines. The Digital Humanities are not an excepti...

People have always tried to represent what they know in a meaningful way. In fact, this is inherent to natural language. In science, however, representations are often required that are more formal than natural language allows, and so information models have been developed. Information models allow us to represent entities in the world, as well as...

When working in digital humanities, we are often required to manage knowledge that is highly vague, either because it refers to things in the world lacking clear-cut boundaries, or because it is incomplete or approximate. The usual approaches to knowledge representation and information modelling, often taken from engineering or natural science disc...

Any knowledge generation process involves raw data comprehension, evaluation and inferential reasoning. These practices, common to different disciplines, are known as data analysis, and represent the most important set of activities in research contexts. Researchers use data analysis software methods and tools for generating new knowledge in their...

In this chapter, we focus on what is likely to be the most common and demanded application of conceptual modelling: that of the development of database systems. We start by introducing databases for those who are not familiar with them and especially relational databases. We introduce the notions of tables, columns, rows, primary keys, foreign keys...

In this chapter, we deal with the fact that models are strongly shaped by the background, training, purpose and even cognitive preferences of the people constructing them and are therefore highly subjective. For this reason, two models having the same scope and purpose and created by different people will probably clash. In this context, we propose...

In this chapter, we introduce the key idea of valorization in CHARM, as a particular case of abstract entity (explored in an earlier chapter). Valorizations are defined as abstract entities of a discursive nature that add cultural heritage value to other valuable entities through interpretive processes that have been agreed upon within a group or d...

In this chapter, we deal with the common but often misunderstood issue of “data about data”, or metadata, also called metainformation. To begin with, we explain how the term “metadata” is often used in the digital humanities and other fields in a loose manner, producing ambiguity and confusion. We then carefully pinpoint proper usage. After that, w...

In this chapter, we introduce abstract entities in CHARM, which are those that are socially constructed and comprised of abstractions or ideas only, with no concrete realization whatsoever. We explore some kinds of abstract entities, including category systems, languages and, very importantly, culturally shared concepts such as beliefs, values and...

In this chapter, we elaborate on the ideas of properties, attributes and semi-associations, all of them introduced in earlier chapters and collectively called features. We introduce some additional characteristics of features, such as the idea that features which must preserve the order of their instances may be marked as sorted in a model. We also...

In this chapter, we introduce the concept of quality as related to conceptual models and provide two non-exclusive approaches through which a model’s quality may be assessed: how well the model allows us to achieve our purpose and how well the model can be understood or modified. Each of these is fleshed out into various quality factors, including...

In this chapter, we deal with the fact that the world is far from static, and changes constantly, making the models that we construct today invalid tomorrow if the things that they represent change in a significant way. We explain why simply updating values and links is not sufficient to mitigate this and introduce the aspect-oriented notion of pha...

In this chapter, we continue working with data types and introduce the notion of enumerated types as model elements that comprise collections of enumerated items. An enumerated item, in turn, is a label with specific semantics, such as France or Green. We explain that enumerated types allow us to specify lists of semantically related labels that ca...

In this chapter, we provide a comprehensive overview of the complete CHARM, using the major concepts introduced in the previous chapter. We explain the major notions of primary and derived entities, tangible entities, agents, manifestations, performative entities, occurrences, abstract entities, valorizations and virtual entities. We also describe...

In this chapter, we introduce the closely related notions of manifestation and performative entity in CHARM. Manifestations are human expressions at a given time and place, which are fundamentally perceived in a direct fashion and through performative aspects. Performative entities, in turn, abstract similar manifestations and are fundamentally per...

In this chapter, we deal with the issue that many common situations that repeatedly arise when doing conceptual modelling can be codified as patterns and applied when necessary. We introduce the notion of modelling pattern, which is taken from the architecture and software engineering worlds, and involves a known problem, an application context, an...

In this chapter, we explore CHARM derived entities in depth, emphasizing the fact that they cannot be understood in an immediate and implicit manner when perceived, but require an explicit reception process. We show how valorizations constitute the “glue” that connects derived entities to the valuable entities that constitute their basis. Also, we...

In this chapter, we deal with the fact that many aspects of the world are unclear, imprecise or not well defined, and when we try to represent them in a model, we are often confronted with the need to either remove or explicitly manage this vagueness. To this end, we introduce two kinds of vagueness: ontological and epistemic, the first dealing wit...

In this chapter, we describe the situation of inherited features not fitting the abstraction level or particular semantics of the recipient class. Since inherited features cannot be removed or ignored, we introduce a redefinition mechanism to alter some of their properties in a controlled manner. After describing the overall concept of feature rede...

In this chapter, we explain why conceptual modelling should be used, what interest it has for archaeology and anthropology, and benefits can be derived from using it. First, we explain how conceptual modelling can help us to explore areas of the world that we do not understand very well, that is, we can try to model a small part of the world in var...

In this chapter, we introduce the notion of representation in CHARM, which corresponds to the fact that certain contents are persistently captured on an embodiment, reflecting the forms and characteristics of the former. Other representation-oriented relationships are also discussed, such as those related to reference and copying.

In this chapter, we introduce CHARM tangible entities, that is, those which are fundamentally perceived in a direct fashion and through their materiality. We explore the different types of tangible entities in CHARM, including places (such as a valley), structures (such as a wall or a building), objects (such as a coin or a pebble), stratigraphies...

In this chapter, we deal with the complex problem of category subsumption and describe how it is implemented in conceptual modelling. To do this, we introduce generalization relationships between classes, which can be used in a model to represent subsumption relationships between categories. The inverse notion of generalization is specialization. B...

In this chapter, we focus on the fact that classes do not exist in isolation, but are semantically connected. We explain that class properties corresponding to complex and relational characteristics can be developed in a model in the form of associations. An association is composed of two semi-associations, which are inverse of each other. Every se...

In this chapter, we move the focus from individuals to categories. Here, we introduce the notion of classes, which are model elements that represent relevant categories of things. We explain that classes have a name, which differentiates the class from others, such as Building or Person, as well as a definition, usually in the form of “genus plus d...

In this chapter, we elaborate on the notions of generalization and specialization, already introduced in earlier chapters. First, we explain that a class may not have multiple specializations, but it can have multiple generalizations. We describe how classes participating in multiple generalizations inherit features via all of them simultaneously,...

In this chapter we introduce the foundations of CHARM, the Cultural Heritage Abstract Reference Model (www.charminfo.org). We describe the benefits of using CHARM to explore, document and communicate portions of archaeological and anthropological entities, among other things. We also consider some objections that are often posited against the use o...

In this chapter, we describe what modelling is from a general perspective. We start by explaining that models represent something in the world in a simplified manner, so that we can reason on the model and then apply the conclusions back to the modelled subject. We define the notions of model scope and purpose and describe how they work as guides t...

In this chapter, we explain that properties (from the previous chapter) corresponding to atomic and simple characteristics can be developed in a model in the form of attributes within a class. We explain that every attribute has a name that distinguishes it from others of the same class, as well as a cardinality, which describes how many things may...

In this chapter, we deal with the issue of organizing large and complex models so that they are easier to use and maintain. We introduce the notion of model architecture, which refers to the way in which we organize a model into a meaningful structure, so that classes and other elements are easy to locate and change. We explain how packages can be...

In this chapter, we introduce the notion of objects, which are elements in a conceptual model which represent relevant entities in the world. We describe the key ideas of object identifier, which works as an arbitrary proper name, and object category, which classifies the object. Then, we move on to describe how the characteristics of an entity can...

In this chapter, we explain how a model is constructed, using a process-oriented approach. We distinguish two major kinds of scenarios when doing conceptual modelling: constructing a model from scratch and altering an existing model to adapt, enhance or improve it. We link back to the philosophical underpinnings of modelling that were discussed in...

In this chapter, we describe the elements in CHARM that can be used in a model to provide context or auxiliary information. First, notions related to measures are described, including named measures. Then, the concept of location is introduced, and a distinction is made between absolute and relative locations. Different kinds of locations are explo...

This chapter elaborates on enumerated types (introduced in an earlier chapter) and describes the fact that an enumerated type can specialize from another enumerated type. The specialized enumerated type inherits all the items from its generalized type. We also explain why specialized enumerated types cannot introduce root items, in order to preserv...

In this chapter, we introduce CHARM occurrences, which correspond to events or situations that happen in relation to other valuable entities. We distinguish between absolute and relative occurrences and, within the latter, between circumstances (such as the building of a house), situations (such as a high unemployment rate) and activities (such as...

In this chapter, we continue with the discussion on model modification from the previous one, but now focusing on the specifics of model extension and particular models. We explain that, as opposed to refactoring or other kinds of changes, extension entails making changes to a model while guaranteeing that the resulting particular model is Liskov-c...

In this chapter, we introduce the major concepts to describe CHARM agents, that is, those entities corresponding to a person or a group of people. We explore different kinds of agents and introduce the distinction between identity agents (which provide identity) and roles (which do not). We also explain that agents work in CHARM as the subjective a...

This chapter starts by presenting the ontological (in the philosophical sense) premises for conceptual modelling. These involve agreeing that reality can be discretized into separate entities, and that these entities can be organized into categories. Then we move on to describe the connections between conceptual modelling and natural language, and...

This unique text/reference reviews the key principles and techniques in conceptual modelling which are of relevance to specialists in the field of cultural heritage. Information modelling tasks are a vital aspect of work and study in such disciplines as archaeology, anthropology, history, and architecture. Yet the concepts and methods behind inform...

The growing needs to analyse and interpret large amounts of complex information has generalised the use of information about information, often called metainformation (or metadata). Metadata approaches and standards have proliferated in fields as diverse as medicine, meteorology, geography, cultural heritage or education, among others. These approa...

Due to humanities generally produce knowledge in textual formats (e.g. narrative conclusions or reports), a properly management of the humanities corpus needs methods for conceptualizing and extracting information from textual sources. Discourse analysis techniques allow extracting information in terms of the connection between discourse structure...

Specialists in the humanities and social sciences often construct models of the realities they work with; these models are usually expressed in natural language, as thesauri, or by similarly informal means. Conceptual modelling, a more formalised approach, has been used in other fields for some time, and we hypothesised that its usage in the cultur...

Ontologies are often understood as having a historical background quite different to that of software engineering, which has caused a number of issues when trying to use them in this context. However, recent works have characterized ontologies as being closely related to models and metamodels, thus allowing for an inclusive treatment and use. In th...

Research on Cultural Heritage works within a research framework different to the well-known hypothetic-deductive method. This means that the conclusions or claims resulting from every particular research work must be supported by good and sound arguments rather than unquestionable proofs. To the best of our knowledge, the current methodological app...

The exponential increase in availability of scientific papers, institutional reports or research monographies in digital contexts (i.e. in digital repositories, archives or social scientific networks) has led to the advancement of manual, semi-automatic or automatic-based methods to analyze these texts in the digital environment. These techniques c...

Information systems are composed of different dimensions of information: methodological, structural, architectural, etc. These dimensions appear connected in textual specifications created at early stages of information systems conception. These multidimensional textual specifications are particularly relevant in cases of information systems concei...

La renovación organizativa de los organismos públicos de investigación (OPIs) es un fenómeno complejo y de creciente importancia, dada la transformación en la que se encuentra inmersa la actividad científica. Este estudio de caso longitudinal analiza el diseño e introducción de innovaciones organizativas en un OPI pertenenciente al CSIC. El artícul...

Software engineering standards often utilize different underpinning metamodels and ontologies, which sometimes differ between standards. For better adoption by industry, harmonization of these standards by use of a domain ontology has been advocated. In this paper we apply this approach in a proof of concept project. We recommend the creation of a...

Safety critical system development includes a wide set of techniques, methods and tools for assuring system safety. The concept of evidence is one of the key notions used to provide safety confidence to stakeholders. Safety goals must be identified during safety analysis. In addition, risks should also be considered and managed, and linked to the a...

The management of cultural heritage information is an important aspect of human society since it enables us to document and understand our past and learn from it. Recent developments in ICT have significantly boosted research and development activities aimed at the creation and management of cultural heritage resources. As a result, information sys...

Contemporary software engineering modelling tends to rely on general-purpose languages, such as the Unified Modeling Language. However, such languages are practice-based and seldom underpinned with a solid theory – be it mathematical, ontological or concomitant with language use. The future of software modelling deserves research to evaluate whethe...

Most of the information that is used as input for the development of information systems is originally produced in non-structured forms, such as verbal communications or free-style text documents. Requirements specifications or documents associated to translation and internationalization of contents are good examples of these kinds of free-style do...

Multi-level modelling allows types and instances to be mixed in the same model, however there are several proposals for how metamodels can support this. This paper proposes a meta-circular basis for meta-modelling and shows how it supports two leading approaches to multi-level modelling.

The conceptual modelling community has no clear, agreed semantics for its models; or more plainly, there is no general agreement on what the models model. One mainstream proposal is that they model concepts , but there is no clear semantics for this; no clear description of what concepts are and how they relate to their domain. This creates theoret...

International Standards have often been developed independently of one another resulting in the multiple use of similar terminology but with different semantics as well as the more obvious dependencies between pairs of standards employing the same term with the same semantics. By the application of conceptual modelling techniques based on an ontolo...

By consideration of scientific paradigm shifts, in this chapter the authors evaluate possible parallels in the evolution of modelling, and particularly metamodelling and modelling language construction, as a basis for evaluating whether or not the time is ripe for a similar change of direction in model language development for software engineering....

The use of models is increasing in software engineering, especially within the MDE initiative. Models are usually communicated by visualizing them, typically using a graphical modelling language. The architecture commonly used to standardize a software engineering modelling language utilizes multiple levels despite the fact that the basic assumptio...

The influence of mainstream philosophy on conceptual modelling and on modelling language development has historically been arcane or, at best, not recognized, whilst modellers might in fact implicitly espouse one particular philosophical tenet. This paper describes and discusses philosophical stances applied to conceptual modeling in order to make...

A domain-specific modelling language can be considered as a situationally focussed conceptual modelling language. A modelling language is typically underpinned by a meta-model that defines its abstract syntax, utilizes a notation (a.k.a. concrete syntax) and possesses a well-defined semantics, sometimes with an associated ontology. However, the rel...

Conceptual modelling allows us to create simplified representations of reality that remove unnecessary detail in order to focus on what is relevant. However, this process of detail removal usually entails an unintended loss of information regarding the temporal variation of reality, the subjective perspectives that there may exist on it, and the di...

Software engineering standards developed under the auspices of ISO/IEC JTC1’s SC7 have been identified as employing terms whose definitions vary significantly between standards. This led to a request in 2012 to investigate the creation of an ontological infrastructure that aims to be a single coherent underpinning for all SC7 standards, present and...

Obtaining models of cultural heritage that guarantee information interoperability and, at the same time, maintain a high degree of fitness to the problem at hand is not a trivial quest. This paper proposes a two-step approach to attain this, where particular models for each problem at hand are derived from a common, standardised Cultural Heritage A...

The present volume consists of the peer-reviewed papers presented at the CAA2011 conference held in Beijing, China between April 12 and 16, 2011. The theme of this conference was -Revive the Past, which means retrieving our history and using it to help create a new civilization. It was a great honour to organize the conference where over 130 resear...

This work aims at evaluating a graphical notation for modelling software (and other kinds of) development methodologies, thus demonstrating how useful the graphical aspects can be for sharing knowledge between the people responsible for documenting information and those responsible for understanding and putting it into practice. We acknowledge the...

In this article we evaluate three modeling techniques coming from information system engineering to represent cultural heritage domain concepts. Evaluations of the modeling techniques were performed by carrying out experiments with cultural heritage specialists. The first experiment consisted in evaluating UML class diagrams and a conceptual graph....

Conceptual modelling is usually accepted as a crucial technique for exploring, understanding, documenting and communicating complex domains. It is then paradoxical that a context where highly complex domains are very common, that of humanities and social sciences specialists reasoning about their fields, lacks appropriate conceptual modelling tools...

This paper uses a longitudinal case study of an internally driven organizational innovation and redesign process at a public research organization (PRO) as a way of illustrating innovation dynamics that result from the need to formulate a new strategic mission for the organization as a response to wider environmental and institutional pressure. Bas...

Building on published guidelines for good design practice as applied to the creation of modelling languages, we consider the creation of an appropriate notation for a domain-specific modelling language for supporting agent-oriented information systems design. We begin by analyzing extant metamodels, in particular that for FAML, in order to visualiz...