Unit 6 – cadastre

In both the private and public sectors, land information is a primary resource for making investment and management decisions. Those who have access to land information have an additional capacity to evaluate situations, to analyze past conditions and to plan for the future.

A land Information System (LIS) is a special type of GIS, that is designed to handle detailed land ownership information. The cadastre is normally a parcel-based and an up-to-date information, and a subset of LIS that has been defined as a record of interests in land, encompassing both the nature and the extent of these interests¹. The cadastre is an official, public record in which complete, up-to-date information for all parcels within a given geographical region is maintained. A cadastre is a comprehensive register of the real property of a country and commonly includes details of ownership, the tenure, the precise location (some can include GPS coordinates), the dimensions (and area), the cultivation if rural and the value of individual parcels of land.

The cadastral parcel is a continuous area or volume of land² in which unique, homogeneous interests or rights are recognized. The need for cadastral information is common to all societies. Parcel-based information³ is required in a wide variety of activities and frequent users range from the individual landowner (current or prospective), to lawyers, surveyors, real estate managers, and agencies at all levels of government.

The cadastre consists of three basic components:

• the cadastral parcel as the basic unit for organizing information in the system;

• cadastral record(s) which may contain both textual and graphical information;

• parcel identifiers or index codes, that serve as the primary spatial reference⁴ for information.

The creation (зд. определение участка) of the parcel also requires specification of boundaries. A boundary is defined as a separation, natural or artificial, that delimits the extent of the parcel and distinguishes it from all other parcels. The Cadastre often describes the value of the parcel and its improvements⁵. There are three categories of cadastres:

• fiscal cadastres developed primarily for property valuation and equitable taxation;

• juridical cadastres which serve as a legally recognized record of land tenure;

• multipurpose cadastres that can encompass both fiscal and juridical cadastres and contain a variety of other parcel-related land information.

The multipurpose cadastre offers several improvements⁶ of a traditional parcel-based systems, including:

• the provision of a geodetic spatial reference system⁷ and large-scale mapping which have wide economic and social benefits;

• the coordination (зд. упорядочение) of existing fiscal and juridical records to reduce duplication and to provide an improved information base (e.g., completeness and reliability of records, indexing and graphical display) for both property assessment and land registration;

• linkage mechanisms to allow integration of cadastral information with information in other LIS and GIS for planning and resource management.

Cadastres are parcel-based land information systems that manage information about the land, its use, and its ownership at the parcel level to support administrative functions. All land administrative functions depend on this information. This figure illustrates the relationship of cadastral systems to land tenure and resource management.

The relationship of cadastral systems to land tenure and resource management

Land Cadastre encompasses such information as land resource capacity⁸, land tenure, land ownership and different land uses. The Cadastre provides:

• information identifying those people who have interests in parcels of land;

• information about those interests, e.g. duration of land rights, restrictions and responsibilities;

• information about the parcel, e.g. location, size, improvement, value.

Land tenure is concerned with the rights, restrictions and responsibilities that people have with respect to the land. The Cadastre may record different forms of land tenure such as ownership, leasehold, easements and mortgages.

Urban cadastre is a physical description of the land and real estate tenure in a city. It contains graphic and textual information. Graphic information includes the description of each individual parcel and building, topographic features such as roads, rivers, contour lines, additional information such as cartographic grids, geodetic benchmarks, etc. Textual information includes names of owners or occupants, names of streets or areas of specific interest, main characteristics of each parcel or building such as the area, the fiscal value, the associated certificates⁹, etc. Both types of information are linked together and managed in a system known as a cadastral information system.

Most of the time, the cadastre is integrated with the property registry, the legal registration of land and real estate property. Integration of the cadastre with the registry creates a parcel-based registry or a legal cadastre. This guarantees the exact correspondence between physical and legal ownership. In other words, wherever there is a parcel or building, there are the corresponding titles or “legal tenure documents” registered in the property registry, and respectively, wherever there are registered titles, there is a unique parcel corresponding to it. This is technically permitted by a unique identification number that links the parcel or the building to the title. In different countries the Surveyor undertakes different roles in relation to the establishment and maintenance of the Cadastre. The Sur­veyor may be responsible for: – cadastral surveying and mapping;

• cadastral information recording;

• land valuation;

• land use planning;

• management of both the graphic and textual cadastral data bases;

• resolving land disputes;

• custody and supply of cadastral information.

Modern technologies, such as up-to-date survey instruments, satellite position fixing (Global Positioning System – GPS), aerial photography and photogrammetry can offer new possibilities to increase the speed and lower the costs for cadastral reform. Computer technologies can usu­ally provide better access to information, better manipulation of cadas­tral data, better quality, and better legal and physical security. To fully utilize modern technologies it is important to have trained personnel and facilities to maintain the equipment.

Notes:

1. …extent of these interests… 2. …continuous area or volume of land… 3. Parcel-based information… 4. spatial reference 5. …the value of the parcel and its improvements 6. several improvements 7. …geodetic spatial reference system… 8. …land resource capacity… 9. …associated certificates…

– степень этих интересов – часть поверхности земли с установленными и закрепленными границами законодательно – кадастровая информация – исходные координаты – назначение (потенциал) участка и его инфраструктура – ряд усовершенствований – исходные геодезические координаты – потенциал земельных ресурсов – соответствующие документы паспорта (межевого дела)