Standardization in the cadastral domain

Organized by the ESF initiative COST (European Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) Action G9: ‘Modelling Real Property Transactions' and FIG (International Federation of Surveyors) Commission 7: ‘Cadastre and Land Management'.

One of the big problems in the cadastral domain is the lack of a shared set of concepts and terminology. International standardization of these concepts (that is, the development of an ontology) could possibly resolve many of these communication problems. There are several motivations behind these standardization efforts, such as meaningful exchange of information between organizations, or efficient component-based system development through applying standardized models. It should be emphasised that a cadastral system entails land registration, the ‘administrative/legal component', and (geo referenced) cadastral mapping, the ‘spatial component'. Together, these components facilitate land administration and a land registry/cadastral system provides the environment in which this process takes place. Data are initially collected, maintained and, probably the most relevant issue in standardization:  disseminated in a distributed environment, which in principle means that data could be maintained by different organizations, such as municipalities or other planning authorities, private surveyors, conveyancers and land registrars –– depending on the local traditions. Standardization of the cadastral domain is in the initial phase and many non-co-ordinated initiatives can be identified.

Goals of the workshop

As indicated above standardization of the cadastral domain server several purposes. In order to develop this, the workshop will try to bring together representatives from different communities and disciplines involved in the cadastral domain: legal specialists, surveyors, ICT-specialists, etc. from different organizations (land registry and cadastral organizations, standardization institutes, industry and academia). An initial model has been developed based on the results of a first workshop. This model can be downloaded here (The paper ‘Lemmen, C., P. van der Molen, P. van Oosterom, H. Ploeger, W. Quak, J. Stoter, and J. Zevenbergen, A modular standard for the Cadastral Domain, Digital Earth 2003 - Information Resources for Global Sustainability The 3rd International Symposium on Digital Earth, 21-15 September 2003, Brno, Czech Republic’) and will be used as a reference for further development. However, the workshop is not limited to this specific model alone and also includes (1) efforts at the national level, e.g. ATKIS in Germany, that do not (directly) aim at an international standard, (2) work that goes beyond the current scope of the core cadastral model and addresses for instance process modelling.

The specific goals for this workshop are to bring together the different communities, publish the results and standardize the cadastral domain model, with emphasis on:

1. further developing the administrative/legal aspects of the model: rights of persons to lands, customary and so called ‘informal rights’, 3D aspects, legal and survey based source documents;

2. further formalizing the model (semantics ontology, knowledge engineering);

3. testing the current model in different countries (evaluation);

4. involving the geo-ICT industry and standardization institutes (support for implementations of the model).

Of great importance for the implementation of interoperable cadastral and land information data could be the Land Information Initiative of the OpenGIS Consortium (OGC), which includes plans for translation between LandXML and Geography Markup Language (GML) XML encodings of relevant object classes.

Submission and publication

Anyone interested in participation is kindly requested to submit an abstract in word or pdf format (1000 words) of a paper within the scope of the workshop’s goals and a short Curriculum Vitae. The abstracts should be sent via e-mail (with ‘Bamberg’ in the ‘subject’ of the header of the e-mail message) to Elfriede Fendel (e.fendel@otb.tudelft.nl) before or on 7 September ’04. Papers should be written and presented in English.

The members of the scientific program committee (SPC) will evaluate the abstracts. All accepted abstracts are expected to be extended to full papers at least on month before the workshop and will be made available in workshop proceedings. The scientific program committee selects the best papers (before the workshop) and these authors will be asked to resubmit a revised paper based on the comments of the SPC’s reviews and feedback during the workshop. These papers will be published (after a peer review process) in a special issue of the international scientific (peer reviewed) journal ‘Computers, Environment and Urban Systems’ (CEUS).

Format of the workshop

The workshop will consist of a mixture of presentations and discussion (PD) sessions and sub-workgroup (SWG) sessions on specific themes, according to the following format:

• 9 December, morning: two PD sessions

• 9 December, afternoon: four parallel SWG sessions, and one PD session

• 10 December, morning: one PD session, one block (continued) of parallel SWG sessions

• 10 December, afternoon: one PD session, one closing session (results of SWG sessions)

A PD session consists of three short presentations followed by discussion. In total at most 15 presentations will be selected based on their quality by the scientific program committee.

Deadlines

7 September ‘04: submission of abstract (1000 words)
1 October ‘04: notification of acceptance (at most 15)
9 November ‘04: submission of selected full papers (5000 words)
9/10 December ‘04: workshop, selection of 5/6 best papers
9 February ’05: submission of revised versions of best papers to CEUS

Organization

Local Organization Committee:
Christoph Schlieder (Bamberg University)
Claudia Hess (Bamberg University)

Organization Committee:
Christoph Schlieder (Bamberg University, Germany and COST G9), chair
Peter van Oosterom (TU Delft, COST G9, the Netherlands)
Elfriede Fendel (TU Delft, the Netherlands), proceedings
Jaap Zevenbergen (TU Delft, COST G9, the Netherlands)
Christiaan Lemmen (Kadaster/ITC Enschede, FIG comm. 7, the Netherlands)

Preliminary Scientific Program Committee:
Peter Bartak (Intergraph, Europe)
Jaap Besemer (Netherlands Cadastre)
Styli Camateros (Bentley, USA)
Peter Dale (UK)
Kevin Daugherty (ESRI, USA)
Wim Devos (JRC, Italy)
Yerach Doytsher (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel)
Stig Enemark (Aalborg University Denmark)
Joseph Forrai (Survey of Israel)
Andrew Frank (TU Vienna, Austria)
Stefan Gustafsson (EULIS representatieve, Lantmäteriet, Sweden)
Winfried Hawerk (Hamburg, Geoinformation and Surveying Agency, Germany,
FIG Commission 7, vice-chair)
Jerry Johnson (ESRI, USA)
Jistke de Jong (TU Delft, the Netherlands)
Gili Kirschner (legal advisor of the Survey of Israel)
Jűrg Kaufmann (Consultant, Switzerland)
Christiaan Lemmen (Kadaster/ITC, FIG Commission 7, the Netherlands)
Hans Mattsson (Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
John McLaughlin (University of New Brunswick, Canada)
Paul van der Molen (Kadaster, the Netherlands, FIG Commission. 7, chair)
Gerhard Muggenhuber (BEV, Austria, FIG Commission 3, chair)
Helge Onsrud (Statetens kartverk, Oslo, Norway)
Peter van Oosterom (TU Delft, the Netherlands), chair
Günther Plicher (OpenGIS Consortium Europe, Münich office, Germany)
Siva Ravada (Oracle, USA)
Bengt Rystedt (Lantmäteriet, Sweden)
Jes Ryttersgaard (National Survey and Cadastre Denmark)
Christoph Schlieder (Bamberg University, Germany)
Guus Schreiber (W3C, semantic web)
Erik Stubkjaer (Aalborg University, Denmark)
Heiner Stuckenschmidt (VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Michael Sutherland (University of New Brunswick, Canada)
Mika Torhonen (FAO)
Christoph Twaroch (Austrian Ministry in charge of cadastre)
Ian Williamson (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Jaap Zevenbergen (TU Delft, the Netherlands)

Motivation

Standardization of the cadastral domain is relevant because computerized cadastral systems can support a customer and market-driven organization with changing demands and requirements. Customers want to have an efficient on line information service that links to the database(s) of cadastral organizations. The application software to support cadastral processes is extending continuously in many countries because of changing requirements. In the future the volume of cross border information exchanges are expected to increase, particularly within the European Union. The more remote that the data user is from the data source, the more important it becomes to ensure that the data are well defined –– for the obvious reason that remote users are likely to have much reduced local knowledge to assist them in interpretation. Trying to make the meaning of the data explicit is therefore an important step in facilitating meaningful exchanges of information across greater distances. The concepts used have to be well defined and structured (that is, related to one other), and this entails development of a cadastral domain ontology. One potential way to express parts of this ontology is UML (Unified Modelling Language) class diagrams.

Cadastral data that are accessible in a computerized environment can (significantly) increase the demand for cadastral data in the cadastral market. Standardization definitively contributes to efficient development and renewal of cadastral systems, also in developing countries. Many land registry or cadastre organizations implemented their computerized systems between 10 and 20 years ago. These systems are now outdated, and their maintenance is complex and expensive. The organizations are now increasingly confronted with rapid developments in the technology: there is a technology push driven by developments in the Internet, (geo-)databases, modelling standards, open systems, GIS; and a market pull driven by an increasing demand for enhanced user requirements, e-governance, sustainable development, electronic conveyancing, and integration of public data and systems. A great deal of effort is being devoted to the development of viable strategies for the modernization of the ICT systems of land registry and cadastral organizations. Standardization in the cadastral domain would help (geo-)ICT vendors, as it would allow them to invest their efforts in the development of a (generic) system, based on the concepts as described in UML class diagrams, instead of focussing on a single cadastral organization. This would stimulate the availability of generic (object-oriented) standard software from multiple (geo-)ICT vendors from which the cadastral organizations can make a selection. This will provide them with the fundament of new systems (in ways that are largely compatible with the concepts used in other countries), without developing everything from scratch: only local modification and extensions would need to be developed.

Whilst access to data, its collection, maintaining and updating should be facilitated at a local level, the overall land information infrastructure should be recognised as belonging to a uniform national service so as to promote sharing within and between countries. A core cadastral domain model in which classes and associations between classes representing objects, attributes and operations are derived from different tenure systems could, in the opinion of the workshop organizers, definitively contribute to the efficient fulfilment of local cadastral needs. To summarise, a standardized core cadastral domain model will serve at least two important goals: it will avoid re-inventing and re-implementing the same functionality over and over again, instead it will provide an extensible basis for efficient and effective cadastral system development, and it will enable stakeholders, both within one country and between different countries, to engage in meaningful communication based on the shared ontology implied by the model.