Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect Procedia Computer Science 77 (2015) 135 – 140
ICTE in Regional Development
Using Resource Description Framework (RDF) for description and modeling place identity Gilberto Marzanoa* a
Rezekne University of Applied Sciences, Atbrivosanas aleja 115, Rezekne, LV 4601, Latvia
Abstract Place identity is a moot notion which encompasses a large heterogeneous set of components. In this paper, we propose the use of abstraction from the real world, Place entity, to describe and model the place identity concept. Place entity can be deemed as a mosaic of physical and social settings of a real place, or of a place representation (virtual or literary). We represented the Place entity as a hierarchical structure and we tried using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) to emulate the place identity process. A preliminary structure of the Place entity is illustrated in this paper, and its components described and analyzed. Considering the huge amount of data available on the Web, we are persuaded that Place entity may be a useful framework for modeling the place dynamics in a moment of great social change. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-reviewunder under responsibility of Sociotechnical the Sociotechnical Systems Engineering of Vidzeme Applied Sciences. Peer-review responsibility of the Systems Engineering InstituteInstitute of Vidzeme UniversityUniversity of Applied of Sciences Keywords: Place identity; Place identity modeling; RDF; Place entity
1. Introduction Migration, identity, and diversity are topical issues in our contemporary society. In Europe, immigrants and refugees have created new, and sometimes squatter settlements, occupying old abandoned villages and low-income neighbourhoods; changing either the places they left or their new locations. Furthermore, a new wave of web-based communities known as Web 2.0 is influencing the destination branding
* Corresponding author. E-mail address:
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1877-0509 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Sociotechnical Systems Engineering Institute of Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences doi:10.1016/j.procs.2015.12.370
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process1, 2. Social networking has completely transformed social life, and social networks are becoming a primary source for both direct and indirect marketing actions. In this context, is the notion of place identity that has been developed in the ‘80s still appropriate? We are persuaded that this is a turning point of the landscape-cultural mosaic modelling. Nowadays, the huge amount of data available on the Web is driving researchers towards new operative investigations on concepts which have a relatively weak empirical grounding. This paper attempts to manage the complexity of place identity through the definition of a framework which compels to perform a more detailed analysis of the multiple and heterogeneous factors underlying this notion. 2. Place identity Place identity is a core concept in the field of environmental psychology. Although many researchers have argued about the multiple dimensions of this concept3, 4, 5, 6, 7, it remains a moot notion which encompasses a large heterogeneous set of components, including cherished personal aspects, physical facets (environmental conditions, landscapes, etc.) social aspects (lifestyle, social attribution, social status, etc.), and other hazy terms, such as spirit of place, soul of place and cultural landscape8. It has been argued, in the ‘80s, that place identity could be theoretically conceived as an individual’s strong emotional attachment to a particular place or environmental setting9; more recently, the role of emotional links with consumers has been considered very important in place branding construction10, 11. Presently, place identity is a subject largely investigated by tourism researchers, and is broadly used by marketers for promoting a destination12. Nevertheless, it has been observed that the identity of a place often presents remarkable, sometimes contradictory, discrepancy among groups of individuals and communities living in the same place. This paper tackles a twofold question about place identity: how to orchestrate the multi-facets of place identity, and how to exploit the data available on the Web for studying the place identity process in a moment of great social change. 2.1. Place identity modelling Attachment, Identity, and Dependence are concepts investigated in environmental psychology, rural-urban sociology and social anthropology for studying the relationship between people and spatial settings. Physical and social characteristics of places have been explored for different purposes (social cohesion, behaviour of communities, urban planning, quality of life, social integrations, etc.). Furthermore, the social image of a particular place, including stereotypes and media coverage, has been considered influential on the relationships among people living in that place13. The most popular theoretical construct of place identity is the Place-identity theory. It was formulated by the environmental and social psychologists Proshansky, Fabian, and Kaminoff9, who argued that place identity is a substructure of a person’s self-identity, and consists of the knowledge and the feelings developed through everyday experience of physical spaces. Unfortunately, the Place-identity theory doesn’t provide much detail on its structures and process, and doesn’t include any operative framework14. Recently, Scannell and Gifford developed an interesting tripartite model of place attachment. They claim that place attachment is part of place identity, arguing that place attachment occurs on both the individual and group levels - although definitions of this term tend to emphasize that “personal connections have to a place”6. The tripartite model is based on three dimensions. The first is the actor dimension that represents who is attached to the place (an individual or a community). The second dimension is the psychological process through which affection, cognition, and behaviour occur in the attachment. The third dimension is the object of the attachment, the place, including its social and physical characteristics. The Scannell and Gifford model represents a good starting point for building a framework that can be used on the Web. It identifies two entities (actor/s and place resources) related through a (psychological) process. Nevertheless, one needs a more operative model which encompasses individual and collective relationships going beyond the psychological dimension, and be usable for exploiting the Web data.
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In order to proceed in this direction, a hierarchical structure, Place entity, has been designed. 3. Place entity According to many researchers, we share the idea that a place is a whole of physical and social settings, so our effort focuses on representing and labelling these settings. Place entity is an abstraction from the real world that has been designed for this purpose. It aims to model the place identity process (Figure 1). Place entity can be deemed as a mosaic of physical and social settings related to a real place, or to a place representation (virtual or literary).
Fig. 1. Place entity scheme
Social settings include both individual and collective knowledge and also experience. Place entity is the result of stratified interactions that human beings have with a place over time. In our model, the meanings associated with a place can differ from individual to individual, from group to group, and from community to community. Nevertheless, part of the meanings could be the same for different individuals, groups, and communities. Place identity is the outcome of a process (a mapping made on a Place entity instance). It corresponds to the resulting subset of items/attributes obtained applying a specific view on a Place entity instance. In our model, place identity expresses the physical and social settings, including positive and negative appreciations, which individuals, groups, or communities deem to characterize a Place entity instance at a given time. Place identity can be considered the output of a sort of filtering of a Place entity instance (Figure 2).
Fig. 2. The place identity process
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We tried to represent the Place entity as a hierarchical structure formed by Classes and SubClasses, deducing them from the literature and from the analysis of the actual contents of travel portals, such as Wikivoyage, Tripadvisor, Booking.com, and Lonely Planet, and some institutional sites. A preliminary structure of the Place entity is illustrated in Figure 3.
Fig. 3. Example of the Place entity structure
The Place entity classes and subclasses are sets of objects or items that represent specific aspects of a place. As a preliminary experiment, we decided to use a three level ontology. The second level nodes of the structure are Physical settings and Social settings. At the moment, the Physical settings subclasses are: Terrain, Landscape, Flora, and Fauna, while the Social settings sub-classes are: History, Art, Traditions, Architecture, Food, and People. The sub-class People includes local attitudes, habits, and behaviour. We defined a second hierarchical structure, that we named Stakeholders. The Stakeholders class includes the subclasses: inhabitants, tourists/visitors, government_institutions, cultural_institutions (museums, theatres, etc.), service_providers (accommodation booking, hotels, restaurants, etc.), place_marketers. Finally, we defined a list of predicates which express the believers of a Stakeholder yi on an item xj contained in the Place entity structure, e.g. xi is_believed_original by yn; xj is_believed_characteristic by ym; xk is_believed_romantic by yz; and so on. 3.1. 3.1. Using RDF for analyzing place identity process The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is an extremely flexible technology capable of addressing a wide variety of problems. RDF is a description for a data model and provides a mean of recording data in a machine understandable format, allowing interchanging and automatic processing.
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We represented the two hierarchical structures, Place entity and Stakeholders, using the RDF language, e.g.: xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#" The primitive category of a place Social settings forms a subclass of Place entity ... owl:Class rdf:ID="Art"/> Art forms a subclass of Social settings museums are institutions that cares for (conserves) a collection of objects ... ...
We experimented with the RDF representation in order to analyse a set of Internet contents related to a place (the city of Riga). A Stakeholder class (Latvian_government_institutions) was mapped into the Place entity class of the selected place on the basis of two predicates (is_believed_original and is_believed_characteristic). We repeated the experiment, mapping a different Stakeholder class (foreign_tourists) into the same Place entity using the same predicates. The results showed some differences, although a common subset of items was found, formed by those items the two stakeholders believed original and characteristic. This has been the first step in building an operational tool for exploring the place identity notion, and the RDF representation demonstrated its effectiveness. The principal problem to tackle, at present, is the organization of automatic content analysis to populate the Place entity structure. 4. Conclusion Recently, many researchers15, 16 share the idea of co-creating the place brand. This idea is based on the assumption that place brands “are built out of the raw material of identity”17. Researchers who support the cocreating brand place idea argue that place identities emerge from the “conversation” between stakeholders. The identity of a place is what stakeholders share about the characteristics of that place. Accordingly, some researchers claim the relative insignificance of the mainstream marketing view applied to place branding18.
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We partially agree with the co-creating place brand idea, since place identity as a “negotiation process” is simultaneously suggestive and reductionist. Nevertheless, the huge amount of data available on the Web is a great opportunity to exploit. The preliminary main activity is building representations and models able to manage that data. RDF is a very useful instrument for this purpose.
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Gilberto Marzano, Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Pedagogical Technologies of Regional Institute of Research (REGI) at Rezekne University (Latvia). Member of the PhD professors board at Udine University (Italy) on Economy, Ecology, Landscape and Territory. He was an executive manager in private ICT companies and director of an R&D software laboratory in Italy.
