In the last three decades information modelling and knowledge bases have become essentially 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 1988, following the series of conferences in the Scandinavian level since 1982. The practical operations were then organized by professor Ohsuga in Japan and Professors Hannu Kangassalo and Hannu Jaakkola in Finland. Geographical scope has expanded to cover first Europe and then other countries. The original “Scandinavian Japanese” was replaced by “European Japanese” in 1991 and by “International” in 2014 in the title of the conference. The workshop characteristic – discussion, time for presentations and limited number of participants – is still typical for the conference.

The 28th International Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases (EJC2018) constitutes a worldwide research forum for the exchange of scientific results. In this way a platform has been established, which brings together researches, as well as practitioners in information modelling and knowledge bases. The main topics of EJC conference cover a variety of themes:

1. Conceptual modelling: Modelling and specification languages; Domain-specific conceptual modelling; Concepts, concept theories and ontologies; Conceptual modelling of large and heterogeneous systems; Conceptual modelling of spatial, temporal and biological data; Methods for developing, validating and communicating conceptual models.

2. Knowledge and information modelling and discovery: Knowledge discovery, knowledge representation and knowledge management; Advanced data mining and analysis methods; Conceptions of knowledge and information; Modelling information requirements; Intelligent information systems; Information recognition and information modelling.

3. Linguistic modelling: Models of HCI; Information delivery to users; Intelligent informal querying; Linguistic foundation of information and knowledge; Fuzzy linguistic models; Philosophical and linguistic foundations of conceptual models.

4. Cross-cultural communication and social computing: Cross-cultural support systems; Integration, evolution and migration of systems; Collaborative societies; Multicultural web-based software systems; Intercultural collaboration and support systems; Social computing, behavioral modeling and prediction.

5. Environmental modelling and engineering: Environmental information systems (architecture); Spatial, temporal and observational information systems; Large-scale environmental systems; Collaborative knowledge base systems; Agent concepts and conceptualization; Hazard prediction, prevention and steering systems.

6. Multimedia data modelling and systems: Modelling multimedia information and knowledge; Content-based multimedia data management; Content-based multimedia retrieval; Privacy and context enhancing technologies; Semantics and pragmatics of multimedia data; Metadata for multimedia information systems.

The Program Committee accepted thirty-nine papers to be published in this book. The papers were evaluated by the international panel of reviewers. In accordance with the conference principles, all papers were presented at the conference, were accepted for publication in this volume. All papers had to be both improved and resubmitted after the conference for this journal publication.

We thank all colleagues for their support to the conference arrangements, especially the program committee, the organizing committee, the program coordination team, and the reviewers. And we thank all participants very much because they are the ones who make the conference.

The Editors

Tatiana Endrjukaite

Alexander Dudko

Hannu Jaakkola

Bernhard Thalheim

Yasushi Kiyoki

Naofumi Yoshida