Annual-Report-2019

ONTOLOGY-BASED DATA INTEGRATION FOR THE
DIGITAL HUMANITIES
This project addresses fundamental and application research in the context
of the Digital Humanities at the intersection between Computer Science,
Artificial Intelligence, Logics, and Philosophy. The driving idea is about the
development of computational models, called ontologies, by which multiple
and heterogeneous datasets can be published in a Web environment and
possibly integrated.
Dr Emilio Maria
Sanfilippo
LE STUDIUM Research Fellow
ARD 2020 INTELLIGENCE DES PATRIMOINES
Programme
From: University of Nantes - FR
In residence at: Centre for Advanced Studies
in the Renaissance (CESR) - Tours
Nationality: Italian
Dates: April 2019 to March 2020
He got a bachelor and master degree in
Philosophy at the University of Catania (Italy)
with an emphasis on analytic philosophy. The
interest for research brought me at Saarland
University (Germany), where I had a research
position at the Institute for Formal Ontology and
Medical Information Science (IFOMIS). I then
moved to the Laboratory for Applied Ontology at
the Italian CNR, and I got a PhD in Information
and Communication Technologies from the
University of Trento with a thesis on ontologies
for design and manufacturing. I moved to France
with a postdoctoral position at the Laboratory of
Digital Sciences of Nantes (at the École Centrale
de Nantes and CNRS), where I continued the
research line of my PhD thesis. Thanks to the
Le Studium fellowship at the CESR, I am now
investigating methodological and applications
concerns relative to the use of ontologies for
cultural heritage data management.
Prof. Benoist Pierre
Host scientist
Benoist Pierre is a full Professor (First Class)
at the University of Tours. In 2016, he has been
elected Director of the CESR (UFR and UMR
7323) and of I-Pat (Intelligence des Patrimoines
Programme) for five year, led by the CESR which
involves several hundred researchers and more
than 40 laboratories in the Centre-Val de Loire
Region. His research work, which was initially
on the relations between religion and politics in
modern-era Europe, is currently being developed
within the CESR according to three axes (i) the
analysis of court societies and their relation to the
State in modern Europe; (ii) the study of heritage
and more particularly châteaux heritage in the
Val de Loire; (iii) the notion of mediatisation and
promotion of sciences principally on culture,
heritage and humanities. Prof. B. Pierre has
published 12 books, 60 papers in international
peer review journals and presented 70 public
talks.
Why are these efforts requiring research support? Let us assume that
your data are about musical scores published in multiple editions. The
way in which you model and describe the data depends on both your
understanding of the musical domain and the terminology adopted in your
working context. Here the research challenge starts to emerge.
Indeed, when you share data with other fellows, you must be sure that they
understand what you mean, namely, that the intended semantics of the
data is preserved in the data sharing process. For example, what you call
‘musical piece’ may be called ‘musical composition’ by others for whom
‘piece’ may be used only for compositions’ parts. As simple as this example
can be, it depicts a source of traps, because there is no guarantee that
third-parties fully understand your data when the latter are shared. Nor
computer systems can fix this situation, since they can not access data
meanings if the latter are not explicitly provided.
Ontologies represent the intended meaning of a vocabulary of terms used,
e.g., for data modelling in such a way to make it processable by both
humans and computers. The main purpose is to enhance communication
between humans, machines, or humans and machines.
In the context of my LE STUDIUM
fellowship at the CESR, I contribute
to design an ontology covering data
spanning across multiple domains,
including musicology and the study
of ancient documents, as well as
biology and natural heritage. The
challenge is to define a conceptual
framework that is general enough
to encompass such a variety of
data while being useful for concrete
application settings. Also, despite
the state of the art is quite rich,
there are several notions which lack
a robust conceptual treatment, e.g.,
that of (musical or literary) work.
For instance, when two people read Shakespeare’s Hamlet, one in English
and the other in French, we commonly claim that they read the same
novel, even though the texts are different. Are there any principles behind
this common-sense intuition? Is it possible to make a cut-off distinction
between a novel and its various texts? These and other questions are
fundamental when data on works have to be managed.
The development of the ontology -- in the shape of a Semantic Web model
-- is currently an ongoing effort, and tests on its quality and usability are
regularly performed to ensure its trustability and applicability in research
projects at the ARD 2020 Intelligence des Patrimoines.
Human & Social Sciences 2019
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