Abstract by Alessio Antonini
In this paper we introduce a new methodology to represent norms. The representation integrates he... more In this paper we introduce a new methodology to represent norms. The representation integrates heterogeneous models of norms like rules in deontic logic and nodes and external references in legal ontologies. The new methodology is inspired by Ferrara's notion of social object as "inscribed action." The representation is scalable, incremental and usable despite the vagueness and dynamics of norm change. We show how the evolution of norms is represented using incremental revisions without loosing the identity of norms over time.
In general, the reasons for belief and act can be not related but when we consider the social rea... more In general, the reasons for belief and act can be not related but when we consider the social reality there are strong evidences of a mutual dependency. The role are the basic construct of society, they require both an action theory and a social epistemology. To make emerge that evidence, well discuss the reasons for a role from the point of view of action in society, using the agent metaphor from the artificial intelligence, and from the point of view of the common knowledge shared in a community, using the concept of social objects from the social ontology. Also, its possible to compare the reasons around a role to show how the reasons are mutually dependent in the definition and the practice of a role. After that, thanks to the role properties we can show how the system of the reasons, of a role, need to be motivating, explanatory and normative for the existence of the role itself. Playing a role means different things: the special position inside an organization, for instance inside a public institution, the powers, rights and obligations, and the expectations. A role can be a delegation to act on behalf of the organization, with the power to use the organizations resources in a collaborative environment with a community that knows how to work together and that shares the same goals. To the other hand, the access to predefined procedures and the compliance with the knowledge shared by the organization requires to give up part of ones autonomy. A role holder needs to acquire the knowledge and to embrace the purpose of the organization with all the consequences for his personal
Society is the largest distributed cognitive phenomenon. Billions of people shares rules of behav... more Society is the largest distributed cognitive phenomenon. Billions of people shares rules of behaviour, goals, desires and take part of a huge orchestration of heterogeneous activities like manufacturing, administration, justice, education, health care, etc. Considering digital societies this phenomenon is also more evident: despite the limits of telematics channels -like the lack of extra-language communication and the physical distance (people that does belong to the same environment -there is something in common that make those societies exist and grow. Society is something more than shared beliefs: it is the convergence of personal interpretation of reality.
Papers by Alessio Antonini
Semantic Web, 2021
Large scale cultural heritage datasets and computational methods for the Humanities research fram... more Large scale cultural heritage datasets and computational methods for the Humanities research framework are the two pillars of Digital Humanities (DH), a research field aiming to expand Humanities studies beyond specific sources and periods to address macro-scale research questions on broad human phenomena. In this regard, the development of machine-readable semantically enriched data models based on a cross-disciplinary “language” of phenomena is critical for achieving the interoperability of research data. This paper reports on, documents, and discusses the development of a model for the study of reading experiences as part of the EU JPI-CH project Reading Europe Advanced Data Investigation Tool (READ-IT). Through the discussion of the READ-IT ontology of reading experience, this contribution will highlight and address three challenges emerging from the development of a conceptual model for the support of research on cultural heritage. Firstly, this contribution addresses modelling...
Proceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, 2020
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This paper presents the philosophical analysis carried out to analyse the stakeholders' needs wit... more This paper presents the philosophical analysis carried out to analyse the stakeholders' needs within the READ-IT project to inform the design of an information management system (IMS) for multidisciplinary research on the reading experience in Europe. The presented approach is aimed to build a metalanguage representing the reading under different perspectives for enabling researchers in collaboratively working on data sources tracking the reading phenomenon. The construction of the metalanguage is made through a reasoning-based process of analysis and synthesis of vocabulary, concepts and theories from multiple domains, recomposed in an interactional model of the researchers as intended users of the system, the data sources on reading and the role of technology in between.
LEDA portal dump including data, theme and instructions.<br>LEDA is a three-year project re... more LEDA portal dump including data, theme and instructions.<br>LEDA is a three-year project researching representations of the Damned in Hell in wall paintings in churches on Crete. <br>The project is being led by Angeliki Lymberopoulou at The Open University, UK, and Vasiliki Tsamakda at the University of Mainz, Germany, and involves a team of academics from seven institutions in the UK, USA, Germany and Greece.<br>
This dataset is extracted through web scraping from Webtoon (https://www.webtoons.com/), a self-p... more This dataset is extracted through web scraping from Webtoon (https://www.webtoons.com/), a self-publishing platform for webcomics. The dataset includes the most popular comics per category, social media analytics (e.g., rating and followers) and top comments for each comic issue, including replies and social media reactions (like and dislikes). <br>This dataset is been generated as part of the OU funded DA20 SRIF44 pilot project on Webcomics. The study uses this dataset for a genre and reception study of webcomics focused on gender and minorities.
RDF triples describing the LEDA database of images of hell
of paper 0197 presented at the Digital Humanities Conference 2019 (DH2019), Utrecht , the Netherl... more of paper 0197 presented at the Digital Humanities Conference 2019 (DH2019), Utrecht , the Netherlands 9-12 July, 2019.
&amp;amp;quot;In this thesis we tackle the problem of the analysis of the traces of human act... more &amp;amp;quot;In this thesis we tackle the problem of the analysis of the traces of human actions on the net, starting from the case study linked to RAI&amp;amp;#x27;s necessity to trace the uses of television media on social platforms (RAI is the Italian public broadcaster). Our research has been drawn up in three phases: domain study, modeling of the domain, modeling of knowledge. The study of the domain has been carried out at an ontological, epistemic and pragmatic-cognitive level. The formulation of a general model for the representation of the domain has been based on semantics linked to the theory of speech acts and the drawing up of an integration process and also the working out of knowledge has been inspired to the mental models theory. An ontological - social theory has been produced which describes entities, properties and relations of the domain and contextualizes knowledge limitations contained on traces in the net. Such theory foresees the integration of other ontological systems which describe the aspects of conventional knowledge of the domain and supplies a description of the roles of the users in the net. The ontological theory has been associated to an interpretative theory of the representations and of the extraction processes and knowledge analysis. It has been also theorized a process which foresees a framework of knowledge integration originated from different social sources, the creation of a global knowledge base and the procedures elaboration of personalized views on the various aspects of interest of the domain. As final result it was also managed to give a description of complex social phenomena as the events, the volatile communities and the evolution of the social use of concepts. &amp;amp;quot;
Applied Sciences, 2022
The World Health Organization and the American College of Sports Medicine have released guideline... more The World Health Organization and the American College of Sports Medicine have released guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behavior, as part of an effort to reduce inactivity worldwide. However, to date, there is no computational model that can facilitate the integration of these recommendations into health solutions (e.g., digital coaches). In this paper, we present an operational and machine-readable model that represents and is able to reason about these guidelines. To this end, we adopted a symbolic AI approach that combines two paradigms of research in knowledge representation and reasoning: ontology and rules. Thus, we first present HeLiFit, a domain ontology implemented in OWL, which models the main entities that characterize the definition of physical activity, as defined per guidance. Then, we describe HeLiFit-Rule, a set of rules implemented in the RDFox Rule language, which can be used to represent and reason with these recommendations in concrete real-world ap...
International Journal of Social Robotics, 2021
Over the last two decades, several deployments of robots for in-house assistance of older adults ... more Over the last two decades, several deployments of robots for in-house assistance of older adults have been trialled. However, these solutions are mostly prototypes and remain unused in real-life scenarios. In this work, we review the historical and current landscape of the field, to try and understand why robots have yet to succeed as personal assistants in daily life. Our analysis focuses on two complementary aspects: the capabilities of the physical platform and the logic of the deployment. The former analysis shows regularities in hardware configurations and functionalities, leading to the definition of a set of six application-level capabilities (exploration, identification, remote control, communication, manipulation, and digital situatedness). The latter focuses on the impact of robots on the daily life of users and categorises the deployment of robots for healthcare interventions using three types of services: support, mitigation, and response. Our investigation reveals that ...
Proceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, 2020
Emerging communication technologies remediate and redefine relations between reader and author, b... more Emerging communication technologies remediate and redefine relations between reader and author, but a comprehensive progressive framework for assessing this dynamic during the process of preparation, transmission, reception, and consumption of media remains elusive. Such a framework is of consequence for hypertext (and first generation electronic literature in particular). Speculative claims for its utility and equally reductive rejections of the reading experience it offers call for a model which assesses the calibration of the reader/author relationship from within the medium itself. This paper presents a first framework for assessing these dynamics both at the stage of authoring and reading. Within this analysis framework we identify eleven remediating factors conceived as scales between opposing tensions, and implement this model with reference to first generation electronic literature.
2018 IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing (SMARTCOMP), 2018
Scaling and visualization theories about traditional maps can be extended to digital maps in orde... more Scaling and visualization theories about traditional maps can be extended to digital maps in order to develop web applications using maps as information management systems, data viewer and recommender systems. Starting from current limitations of web application using maps, we outline an alternative approach based on building an indexing system connecting scales and contents, on fixing visualization and styling rules, and attributing an active role to the user in defining goals, area of interest and related contents. This contribution presents the first steps towards a theoretical framework to develop map-based applications where contents are connected to the map entities and the user interactions impact on the status of the map and of the application at the same time.
The integration of ICTs in the urban management is increasing at all levels of public administrat... more The integration of ICTs in the urban management is increasing at all levels of public administrations in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness of public services, but their role is still instrumental rather than drive a change toward a more collaborative local governance. On the other hand, there is a raising expectation of the civil society to participate in decision making processes and contribute in defining local policies about sensitive topics. These purposes are often addressed by using or creating community digital tools designed for a specific contextual scope, resulting in a deep fragmentation of information about civic initiatives and social innovation projects and a lack of continuous communication among urban stakeholders even working in the same area. The challenge is to design an ICT solution to refactor the current practices of cooperation between private and public sector and support a real change in the city management processes from the local to the territo...
Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications, 2017
Traditional maps are one of the oldest way to express relevant information on a locality base, as... more Traditional maps are one of the oldest way to express relevant information on a locality base, as synthetic representations of reality. The traditional visualization theory of maps and the related principles used to structure spatial information can inspire the modelling of new solutions in the field of information management in web application. But, the fast and generalized spreading of digital maps, and the related production of geo-localized social media is not followed by a deep integration of map in web applications, preventing the effectiveness of digital maps in solving pressing issues like aggregation, retrieval, recommendation and presentation of spatial media. Through the analysis of key concepts of maps, this contribution addresses the foundations of map-based applications, discussing the limits of current approaches and introducing new opportunities based on deep integration between maps and applications.
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Abstract by Alessio Antonini
Papers by Alessio Antonini
common ground consenting new shared experience thorough a more structures and complex orchestration of peoples’ life. We introduce social objects, a model for the results of all shared processes of interpretation of reality. Considering the traces of agents’ actions, It is possible to rebuild the underling knowledge and access to those shared mind representations."
The European Union adopted the Pact of Amsterdam on the 30 May of 2016, a new European Urban Agenda (2). This document make official the strategy to improve the cooperation among cities and strengthen the "urban dimension" in EU decision making by assuming cities as priority funds target.
In order to stimulate growth, liveability and innovation in the cities of Europe and to ensure the maximum utilisation of the growth potential of cities to successfully tackle social challenges, the European Commission decided to fixe new working methods with the following objectives:
• To promote, develop, implement and evaluate regulations and legislation in line with local practice in cities, integrating the operative level of Member state with the local entities.
• To support cities in having a better access and utilisation of European funds, shifting the focus from territories to cities.
• To improve the cooperation based on sharing good practices, urban knowledge and innovation.
The United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development took place this year in Quito, Ecuador (https://habitat3.org/) involving thirty thousand people from 167 countries and from different sectors: mostly local government and majors, but also non- profit, business and academia. The product of this event, happening ones in 20 years, is the New Urban Agenda, an action oriented document that set global standards of achievement in sustainable development. One of the major point of this global summit has been the new positive role accorded to the urbanization and the rethinking of cities as resources centre to exploit for improving the quality of life of the world population and address future challenges. The new role of ICT in shaping the future of cities has been synthetize in:
“We will promote the development of national information and communications technology policies and e government strategies as well as citizen-centric digital governance tools, tapping into technological innovations, including capacity development programmes, in order to make information and communications technologies accessible to the public, including women and girls, children and youth, persons with disabilities, older persons and persons in vulnerable situations, to enable them to develop and exercise civic responsibility, broadening participation and fostering responsible governance, as well as increasing efficiency. The use of digital platforms and tools, including geospatial information systems, will be encouraged to improve long-term integrated urban and territorial planning and design, land
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administration and management, and access to urban and metropolitan services.” New Urban Agenda (3).
It is not surprising that Computer Science is increasingly focusing on urban areas to support solutions towards the above challenges. If firstly Computer Science proposed technological solutions, as witnessed by the Smart Cities trend, nowadays citizens are becoming the centre of the debate. Marcus Foth in the Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics (4) affirms that “information is literally what constitutes a city” highlighting how the role of the physical city is to be a container for information-based human activities.
It is not surprising that Computer Science is increasingly focusing on urban areas to support solutions towards the above challenges. If firstly Computer Science proposed technological solutions, as witnessed by the Smart Cities trend, nowadays citizens are becoming the centre of the debate. Marcus Foth in the Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics (4) affirms that “information is literally what constitutes a city” highlighting how the role of the physical city is to be a container for information-based human activities.
Among the many challenges offered by urban areas we focus on the collaborative management by citizens of commons. A growing literature in sociology, economics, law architecture, etc. recognizes that cities are commons: urban areas are not only private or public, but they belong also to a third dimension of economics where citizens manage and take care of urban spaces and municipalities assume the role of enablers. This trend makes pair with the recognition that citizens play a role in public services and when this role is recognized and supported, it is likely that the services are improved. The Nobel prize Elinor Ostrom has been the economist who introduced in the scientific debate both issues from the ‘90s.
In both cases the point is supporting the cooperation among citizens via a civic platform. The first two requirements for such a platform are self-evident:
1. It must express the geographical dimension of urban spaces.
2. It must offer social network functionalities.
Already these two requirements pose a challenge, since there is no solution combining the two aspects both at a research and commercial level. Moreover, entering in the details of putting these two dimensions together raises a number of further research questions:
1. Since many social networks already exists, which are the requirements requesting for a new one of a different kind?
2. Which kind of entities should populate the urban map? which are the properties of such entities? which are their functionalities? how they are connect the one with the other?
3. Traditional cartography associates different information at different level of details. Current GIS or VGI technology don’t. How to allow users to interact with an urban map at different levels of detail? How to build automatically different scales starting from cartographic data such as OpenStreetMap?
4. Since the platform’s aim is to support cooperation, an explicit management of time is requested. Most social applications and VGI sistems don’t consider time. How to model the temporal dimension of urban entities in an effective and efficient way?
5. How organize the architecture of such a system, which merges social networking functionalities and GIS? Being a platform oriented to citizens, how to involve them in the co-design of the platform so to take advantage of a participatory approach?
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6. Finally, given the general-purpose character of such a platform, how to test it in different settings?
The methodology to answer these questions is not merely theoretical but it resulted in the development of the georeferenced FirstLife civic social network which the candidate worked on and in its testing, in an action-research fashion. In doing this, the candidate lead a team of several programmers and cooperated with the other researchers working on the co-design and testing, under the overall supervision of Prof. Guido Boella within the framework of several funded research projects (see Chapter 8).
Integral part of the thesis is thus the platform itself deriving from the research answering the above research questions. FirstLife is a fully functional prototype developed using precise software engineering methodologies and tested in several scenarios with around 2,000 users.
Hopcroft's algorithm for minimization finite state automata. We
will pay a particular attention to the non deterministic step
(C,a) ← some(S). We implement three more strategies: random,
bigger and smaller-size set and using the LIFO strategies studied
by Manuel Baclet and Claire Paggetti, after we test and verify
with Sturmian, Bruijn, Fibonacci and random circular words. We
see there is not particular differences between each strategies.
An ontological - social theory has been produced which describes entities, properties and relations of the domain and contextualizes knowledge limitations contained on traces in the net. Such theory foresees the integration of other ontological systems which describe the aspects of conventional knowledge of the domain and supplies a description of the roles of the users in the net.
The ontological theory has been associated to an interpretative theory of the representations and of the extraction processes and knowledge analysis.
It has been also theorized a process which foresees a framework of knowledge integration originated from different social sources, the creation of a global knowledge base and the procedures elaboration of personalized views on the various aspects of interest of the domain.
As final result it was also managed to give a description of complex social phenomena as the events, the volatile communities and the evolution of the social use of concepts.