Dear Dan, All
I do not understand what you mean by making your life "easy". The
question is, if the identity conditions of the classes you use are
compatible with the reality you describe, and not if some properties or
labels appear convenient.
Nobody forces you to use the CRM. It is made for reliable information
integration. If you use it, better not abuse it;-). Franco has made good
arguments below, that E53 Place is not what you take it for, and that
the distinction of bona fide and fiat cannot be verified in relevant
cases. If you replace E53 by your understanding of a "Place", basically
you abuse the CRM. If scope notes are not well-written, please refer to
them, but please do not create your own;-).
Having said that, we have the following: The Space-Time Volume takes its
identity from either coordinates or a phenomenon, including claims in
terms of coordinates, that stay within such, fuzzy in general,
boundaries that form "volumes".
No "named place" exists forever, hence it changes in time. If I describe
a dinosaur bone found in Desert Gobi, there was no Desert Gobi at that
time. "E53 Place" is not a "place". E53 describes a geometric extent.
Hence, it is the projection of the (maximal or current) extent of the
named phenomenon. It is good practice to define an instance of E53 Place
"Extent of Desert Gobi in 2019". It is wrong to regard the Desert as an E53.
It is explicit in the scope note of E4 Period:
"A geopolitical unit as a specific case of an instance of E4 Period is
the set of activities and phenomena related to the claim of power, the
consequences of belonging to a jurisdictional area and an administrative
system that establishes a geopolitical unit. Examples from the modern
period are countries or administrative areas of countries such as
districts whose actions and structures define activities and phenomena
in the area that they intend to govern. The borders of geopolitical
units are often defined in contracts or treaties although they may
deviate from the actual practice. The spatiotemporal properties of
Geopolitical units can be modelled through the properties inherited from
E92 Spacetime Volume."
All examples you gave of things with a political identity are instances
of E4 Period. Period;-). All "places" defined by boundaries of
geological features, such as islands, are Physical Features, typically
E27 Site. Both have spatial projections.
The island of Crete was not an island 5 million years ago (Mediterranean
dried out), and considerably larger in the last Ice Age.
They change as all physical things.
Please read the scope notes.
It is per definitionem wrong for all CRM concept to argue with the
meaning of the label. Labels can only be wrong wrt to the scope note.
Per definitionem they do not constitute definitions. It is wrong to
argue that Czechoslovakia is not a period. You may argue if
Czechoslovakia as an E4, or if "Period" is the best label for the scope
not of E4. It is correct to regard "Extent of Czechoslovakia 2000" as an
instance of E53.
These are foundational principles of the CRM, hence not debatable,
because changing them would create other "ontologies".
We have discussed and published in CRM-SIG modelling principles, which
are under review. I kindly ask all of you that help us improving the CRM
with your vivid interest and valuable responses, to read those before
entering deeper philosophical discussions. We have put the principles
now on a more visible place:
http://www.cidoc-crm.org/methodology-of-ontology-development
Unfortunately, as I see now, this principle, we have presented hundreds
of times in meetings and tutorial, has not be formulated strong enough
neither in the above document nor the CRM text.
What comes next in the Methodolgy is section 8.3, which is not further
elaborated.
I therefore propose to add in the CRM, in the section Terminology,
definition of "Class", to add an adequate variant of
"It is per definitionem wrong for all CRM concept to argue with the
meaning of the label. Labels can only be wrong wrt to the scope note.
Per definitionem they do not constitute definitions."
So, concluding, the solution is E4 or E27 for all those guys, life is
easier with the CRM ;-)
I hope this makes things clearer:-)
Please contradict me;-), if necessary,
Martin
On 10/5/2019 8:40 AM, Franco Niccolucci wrote:
Dear Dan,
I am a bit scared by what you propose. Let me summarize your procedure.
You have a bag of things: islands, settlements (by the way, what do you mean by
settlement?), territories. They all have the same nature, and have borders
separating them from the rest of the universe: some are bona fide, i.e. they
are borders permanently (or almost so) involving some discontinuity or
heterogeneity; others don’t, and they are called fiat borders. This
classification created by Smith and Varzi in a famous paper is independent from
time variability.
For example, an island has bona fide borders, but they may abruptly change due
to natural phenomena, and Thira is a well-known example of this. A coast may be
eroded by waves, sometimes very slowly and sometimes in a way perceptible by a
human. A glacier is a bona fide object because its borders are defined by the
intrinsic difference between the ice and the terrain, but it changes its shape
in time, being larger in the winter compared to the summer.
In the paper by Smith and Varzi introducing such concepts, the North Sea is
mentioned as a fiat object although it is reasonably stable in time; actually
all fiat objects tend to be variable in time due to their social/human
definition.
Further, time independence is not the same as time absence: Place is a concept
based on time absence. To keep the integrity of your bag content, Place should
be a 4D cylinder not varying along the t-axis. According to the current CRM
definition, it is instead timeless. How would you manage the above mentioned
case of Thira? It starts existing as a Place, but after the eruption it becomes
a Space-Time Volume?
Unfortunately I have no clean solution to offer. The only escape way I see
tonight is to illegally associate to every Place a Space-time volume, also
called Place, which has identical time sections to the Place at any time t,
from the Big Bang to the end of the universe we could say; but no CRM property
exists that allows associating the cross-section of a 4D Space-time volume at a
given time t0 to the corresponding 3D region, a Place. In other words, Places
would (always?) be projections (P161) of Space-time volumes; when the latter
does not change in time, i.e. it is a 4D cylinder, it is also called a Place.
This proviso makes your distinction not illogical any more, but just illegal;
which is a substantial step forward.
Then, variability in time is a matter of granularity, and may be well chosen by
you according to the scope and purpose of your modeling.
I am sending you separately some considerations on Space-time volumes - which
are of course available to all the interested ones. A good read for the weekend.
Regards
Franco
Prof. Franco Niccolucci
Director, VAST-LAB
PIN - U. of Florence
Scientific Coordinator
ARIADNEplus - PARTHENOS
Editor-in-Chief
ACM Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH)
Piazza Ciardi 25
59100 Prato, Italy
Il giorno 4 ott 2019, alle ore 21:46, Dan Matei <d...@cimec.ro> ha scritto:
Hi friends,
In my legacy data, beside precise geographical Places (polygons, lines,
points), of course I have
named territories.
Well, all Places are time-dependent: they are all post Big-Bang :-) But in
order to simplify my
life, I am tempted to model as E53_Place the bona fide spatial objects:
• the "history-independent" places (e.g. Island of Crete, North America)
• the settlements (yes, a brutal simplification as bona fide objects)
and as E92_SpaceTime_Volume the fiat spatial objects:
• the territories of (extended) administrative units (counties...,
countries, empires).
A few territories are stable in space AND time, e.g. Czechoslovakia, almost
(1918-1993, with the
WW2 caesura), but others... Think of the Habsburg Empire.
Of course, there are "special" cases of almost identity, as "Malta" (the
island) and the territory
of "the Republic of Malta" (1964-), but I could live with them :-)
What do you think ? could that be a reasonable enough decision ?
Dan
_____________________________________________________________
Dan Matei, bibliograf
Institutul Național al Patrimoniului, Secția Biblioteci Digitale
Piața Presei Libere nr. 1, 013701 București
tel. 0725 253 222, 021 317 90 72, fax: 021 317 90 64
dan.ma...@patrimoniu.gov.ro; d...@cimec.ro
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