In the last decades information modelling and knowledge bases have become hot topics not only in academic communities related to information systems and computer science but also in business areas where information technology is applied.

The 16th European-Japanese Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases EJC 2006 continues the series of events that originally started as a co-operation between Japan and Finland as far back as the late 1980's. Later (1991) the geographical scope of these conferences expanded to cover all of Europe as well as countries outside Europe other than Japan.

The EJC conferences constitute a world-wide research forum for the exchange of scientific results and experiences achieved in computer science and other related disciplines using innovative methods and progressive approaches. In this way a platform has been established drawing together researches as well as practitioners dealing with information modelling and knowledge bases. Thus the main topics of the EJC conferences target the variety of themes in the domain of information modelling, conceptual analysis, design and specification of information systems, ontologies, software engineering, knowledge and process management, data and knowledge bases. We also aim at applying new progressive theories. To this end much attention is being paid also to theoretical disciplines including cognitive science, artificial intelligence, logic, linguistics and analytical philosophy.

In order to achieve the EJC targets, an international programme committee selected 13 full papers, 5 short papers, 2 position papers and 8 poster papers in the course of a rigorous reviewing process including 33 submissions. The selected papers cover many areas of information modelling, namely theory of concepts, database semantics, knowledge representation, software engineering, WWW information management, context-based information retrieval, ontological technology, image databases, temporal and spatial databases, document data management, process management, and many others.

The conference would not have been a success without the effort of many people and organizations.

In the Programme Committee, 27 reputable researchers devoted a good deal of effort to the review process in order to select the best papers and create the EJC 2006 programme. We are very grateful to them. Professors Yasushi Kiyoki and Hannu Kangassalo were acting as co-chairs of the programme committee. The VSB-Technical University Ostrava, Czech Republic, promoted the conference in its capacity as organiser, and professor Marie Duží acted as conference leader. Her team took care of various practical aspects necessary for the smooth running of the conference. Professor Hannu Jaakkola and his team took care both of general organizational things necessary for running the annual conference series and of arranging the conference proceedings in the form of a book to be printed by IOS Press Amsterdam. We gratefully appreciate the efforts of everyone who lent a helping hand.

We are convinced that the conference will prove to be productive and fruitful toward advancing the research and application of information modelling and knowledge bases.

The Editors

Marie Duží, Hannu Jaakkola, Yasushi Kiyoki, Hannu Kangassalo