Grothendieck groups and a categorification of additive invariants

Abstract: A topologically-invariant and additive homology class is mostly not a natural transformation as it is. In this paper we discuss turning such a homology class into a natural transformation; i.e., a "categorification" of it. In a general categorical set-up we introduce a generalized relative Grothendieck group from a cospan of functors of categories and also consider a categorification of additive invariants on objects. As an example, we obtain a general theory of characteristic homology classes of singular varieties.