Reid-Show Authoring Tools : Risk, Space and History

摘要

In social sciences, most events occur in specific time and space. We call such events here "temporal-spatial events".[l]It is obvious that events, having always a beginning and an end, appear at a specific place or in particular space. Generally speaking, we describe temporal-spatial events by using the factors such as the temporal attribute "when", the spatial attribute "where" and the observation of act or phenomenon "who did what/what became how". Suppose there exists an conceptual data model regulating some rules to describe those factors, it enables us to store various temporal-spatial events as data and to refer with one another. We, therefore, define a simple temporal-spatial data model, calling "Reki-Show"[2]. We also call the information system, consisting of Reki-Show data model, "Reki-Show System", and consider Reki-Show System as the basic information system to deal with the various events in human society. At this point, we don't mention any particular software or program. "Reki-Show System" is an conceptual design of information system. This information system is not novel at all, but would be rather used "ordinarily" in various fields. For instance, when researchers arrange the information in chronological tables, it indicates the data operation focusing on the temporal attribute in the events. When they mention the information in maps, it indicates the data operation focusing on the spatial attribute in the events. It usually requires, however, a great deal of labor to rearrange from the viewpoint of the spatial attribute the information through the temporal attribute. This would occur not only to researchers but also to those who have ever dealt with various temporal-spatial events such as policy makers, analysts and so on. In short, it is no exaggeration to say that we have been tackling with "Reki-Show" data without any tools for Reki-Show System use. Accordingly, we have recognized that it is indispensablein the future social sciences to have the database and tool for both the temporal and spatial attributes, and have been developing Reki-Show Authoring Tools based on the conceptual framework in Reki-Show System. At present, the fundamental component has been developed already through some steps, and the system is now applied to the empirical research. We would like to make a report of the outline at this stage. This paper explains the basic concept in Reki-Show (Conseptual Data Modeling), followed by the outline of the implemented system. Furthermore, some cases used in our actual research are introduced, and the future roadmap and prospect are referred to at the end.