A modular standard for the cadastral domain: Application to the Portuguese Cadastre

Following recent worldwide developments and initiatives by FIG (Cadastre 2014) and UN, an object oriented, conceptual model for the Cadastral Domain, adapted to Portuguese Cadastre and related Real Estate Register is presented, based on a previously proposed standard. After a brief description of present Cadastral and Land Registration situation in Portugal, UML (Unified Modeling Language) literate modeling was used to describe the top level classes by using a structured mix of UML Class Diagrams and natural text. Important contributions of this paper are the evaluation of the FIG core cadastral model by applying it to Portugal. It turns out that a limited number of the classes of the core model are currently not needed (but some of them might be used in the future) and that other classes were added specifically for the situation in Portugal. This is anticipated use of the core model and in case similar patterns occurs in several countries, the new version of the core model should be adapted accordingly within the FIG. In addition to these static model aspects, Activity Diagrams were used to model dynamic behavior concerning a number of chosen Cadastral Update tasks. Currently, the dynamic aspects are not yet present in the FIG core cadastral model, but in case similar dynamic patterns occurs in several countries, then this should be added to the core model. (Notation: In this article, all class names appearing in the text are written in Italics, while the names of class methods are written in Bold Italics and names of attributes are in the in default text style. Where it exists a correspondence with the standard model, the original English name is referred within brackets.)