FIG Commission 7 Cadastre and Land Management Annual Meeting 2011

26-30 September 2011, Innsbruck, Austria

FIG Commission 7 held his annual meeting from Sept. 26th to 30th 2011 in the wonderful city of Innsbruck, Austria. This very successful event culminated with the high level International Symposium Cadastre 2.0. This meeting welcomed delegates from 30 countries among them FIG Vice President Professor Chryssy Potsiou, former Chairs of Commission 7 Andrzej Hopfer, Ian Williamson, Paul MunroFaure and András Osskó. Without any doubt, issues related to land administration and cadastral perspectives are still of very high interest, namely in regard of citizens’ involvement, crowd sourcing and social medias. And to completion of cadastre and land registration in the developing world, this concerns about 75% of the 6 billion or so spatial units in use by humans on the planet.

In brief:

• The future of cadastre is high on the agenda of the FIG Commission 7. Jürg Kaufmann and Ian Williamson shared their thoughts with the Commission.
• Many discussions about one hand the need for a AAA Cadastre (Accurate, Authoritative, Assured) for the some advanced countries and on the other hand, the immediate need for low cost solutions to meet the challenge of population in developing countries. There are different opinions and solutions.
• Developments of 3D cadastre have been discussed. This will be one of the important attention points in the work of the Commission, as well as management of government lands, pro poor land tools (with UN-HABITAT), spatial enabled societies, climate change, the cadastral template and the ISO Land Administration Domain Model.
• There was a contribution on the European Measurement Code for the floor and area of buildings and in general attention to condominium rights with cases from Italy.
• The technology will take over the work of surveyors in land registration more and more. This work can be done by many people based on a very short education. We will not see cadastral surveyors in the field so much in the future.
• Surveyors role and contribution to land administration is under change from field surveys to information and quality management of spatial data and being supportive and leading in developments of national spatial data infrastructures with a broad application range. This can only be done in close co-operation with professionals from other disciplines. Reliability of data is the key contribution of our profession.
• It will be possible that people develop their own cadastre based on infrastructures as Google and Facebook.
• Developments of cadastral systems in Asia; e.g. Malaysia and Korea are very impressive; also in support of huge land reforms.
• Our colleagues from Africa need support for their actions in relation to their governments. FIG will not take a position in political discussions, but will provide alternative approaches, checklists in implementation alternatives – e.g. in relation to land grabbing as it can be observed in many countries; in co-operation with FAO.
• Disaster management and importance of cadastre was discussed. An example from Hungary illustrated the need of combining data from different sources in case of disaster.
• Impact of earth quakes and tsunamis for cadastre was discussed with cases from Japan and New Zealand. Rapid relief based on cadastral information.
• A very interesting visit to the BEV Cadastral Office of Kufstein. Austria was one of the very first countries with a digital cadastre and land registration.
• A very impressive guiding tour of the Construction of the Lower Inn Valley Railway Tunnel Site.

Some quotes:

• Politicians don’t want to hear about cadastre. They want to solve problems – Ian Williamson
• We are the generation that has made the shift from paper documents to digital cadastre – Christiaan Lemmen
• Crowd-sourcing within the emerging spatially enabled society is opening up opportunities to fundamentally rethink how professionals and citizens collaborate in land administration. Let’s try it! Let’s pilot it! – Robin McLaren
• Mobile phone is the laptop of developing countries – Brent Jones
• Listen to what people are trying to do – Matthew Delano
• Only surveyors care about accuracy – Gavin Adlington
• Future cadastre will be 3D, monitoring dynamics based on history data, multifunctional and multi jurisdictional, integration in social networks and it will become an essential element of the knowledge society – Giorgio Pauletto
• Crowd-sourcing has been used successfully in some contexts to improve geographical data.  It is now an option that cadastral organization will have to consider in order to support and advance the normal process. - Chryssy Potsiou
• There is a world outside the surveyors’ community building up a parallel system. We need to find how to co-operate with these groups – Gerda Schennach

There is an urgent need for knowledge and information on the latest developments in cadastre and land registry in many countries; the work of the commission (reports, cadastral template, proceedings) are used for this purpose. This could be even better communicated. And the link with Géomètres sans Frontières to be strengthened; a challenge for the young generation of surveyors.

Commission 7 wants to thank the Austrian Society for Surveying and Geoinformation and more specifically Mrs Gerda Schennach, Vice-Chair of Commission 7, for organizing such a perfect meeting.

For more details, see the FIG Commission 7 website: http://www.fig.net/commission7/index.htm

Daniel Roberge, Chair
FIG Commission 7

The Proceedings of the International FIG Symposium "Cadastre 2.0" are obtainable. Price € 25,-- incl. tax and postage. Please order it here Further information on the symposium: https://sites.google.com/site/figsymposium2011/

14 October 2011