Bridging the gap towards a standardized cadastral model

The move towards a standardized cadastral domain model is a challenging endeavour since the model must address an administrative or legal component, as well as a spatial component. The goal of any model is to simplify and provide an abstraction of a complex and diverse world. If the model can be standardized, interfaces between data, users, and systems can provide a mechanism that will allow the physical sharing of cadastral data among many implementations.While considerable work has been done by a number of agencies to provide local models that define logical cadastral entities, attributes, domains and relationships, the models do not provide guidelines for publicizing the content of a cadastral database in a form that is understandable by stakeholders; some whom may not understand data model semantics but possess knowledge of the cadastral domain. This situation was identified in Cadastral 2014—A Vision for a Future Cadastral System [Kaufman, Jürgm, Steudler, Daniel (1998) Cadastre 2014—a vision for a future cadastral system. Working Group 1 of FIG Commission 7, July] where most land recording systems consist of a land registry component handled by notaries and lawyers and a separate spatial component taken care of by surveyors.In order to bridge the communication gap, a number of agencies, such as the US Federal Geographic Data Committee, are developing cadastral profiles that detail metadata attribute content and data dictionaries that support the transfer of a cadastral logical model to a physical model.Through this paper, the authors present criteria which governments might consider in documenting its cadastral profile, as well as the international standardization issues that must be considered in doing so in order to successfully move forward.Finally, this paper reviews a methodology by which cadastral profiles developed by a number of agencies can be compared identifying their similarities and differences. In addition, the authors introduce collection conventions based on passed experiences of the International Hydrographic Organization who had faced similar challenges to identify individual real world phenomena used to define features objects within a cadastral domain model.