In the last three decades information modelling and knowledge bases have become essential and important subjects, not only in academic communities related to information systems and computer science, but also in the business area where information technology is applied.

The series of International Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases (EJC) originally started as a co-operation initiative between Japan and Finland in 1982. The practical operations were then organized by professor Ohsuga in Japan and professors Hannu Kangassalo and Hannu Jaakkola in Finland (Nordic countries). The geographical scope expanded, first to cover Europe, and recently also other countries. Because of this, “European Japanese” was replaced by “International” in the title of the conference in 2014. The workshop characteristics – discussion, time for presentations and a limited number of participants – is typical of the conference.

The 26th International Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases (EJC 2016) constitutes a world-wide research forum for the exchange of scientific results and experiences. In this way, a platform has been established which brings together researchers as well as practitioners in information modelling and knowledge bases. The main topics of EJC conferences cover a variety of themes: Conceptual modelling; Knowledge and information modelling and discovery; Linguistic modelling; Cross-cultural communication and social computing; Environmental modelling and engineering; Multimedia data modelling and systems.

The Program Committee accepted 33 papers to be published in this book. The papers were evaluated by the international panel of reviewers (Program Committee). In the conference program, these were organized in the sessions shown in Fig. 1. In accordance with the conference principles, all papers were presented at the conference and both short and full papers were accepted for publication in this volume. All papers had to be both improved and resubmitted after the conference; so it is the final set of selected conference papers in their improved form which appear in this book.

We thank all colleagues for their support to the conference arrangements, especially the reviewers, the program committee, the organizing committee, and the program coordination team. Finally, the participants make the conference – thanks to all of them. We would also like to offer our special thanks to the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies for their economic support in the organizing costs of the conference and to Huawei Technologies Oy (Finland) Co. Ltd. for covering the printing costs of this book.

In conclusion, we would like to add a few words about the conference itself. It was held in Tampere on the premises of Holiday Club Tampereen Kylpylä. After an extensive renovation and modernization, the premises – having a long industrial history – were opened as a Spa hotel at the lakeside near the center of the City of Tampere. Tampereen Puuvillatehdas started its operation – the spinning mill and the textile factory – in 1899. It built its first factory on the Lapinniemi cape of Näsijärvi Lake. In 1934, it was bought by and merged with Tampella Ltd., which moved all its textile industry to Lapinniemi in 1977. The factories were closed in the middle of 1980s in the era when the textile industry became globalized and left Finland.

We had 49 participants at the conference. In addition to the papers accepted in the review process there were 4 top lectures given by invited speakers – 3 (Professors Marja-Leena Linne, Moncef Gabbouj and Hannu Kangassalo) of them from Finland and 1 (Professor Hideyuki Tokuda) from Japan. Our special thanks to them for their contribution to the successful program.

The Editors

Hannu Jaakkola

Bernhard Thalheim

Yasushi Kiyoki

Naofumi Yoshida