Application of LADM for the integration of land and housing information in China: The legal dimension

The integration of land and housing registration is a key opportunity for China: improved land governance is the intended outcome. Prior to the design of any integrated information system, the legal requirements the system must satisfy need to be identified. This paper identifies and reviews the legal requirements for the integration of land and housing information in China. Specifically, the existing legislative framework relating to land, consisting of seven levels of legislation, is interrogated. A collection of legal requirements emerges: these are categorized into themes including registration, maintenance, mortgage, transfer of real estate rights, relevant materials and archives, and preliminary notice. In order to be more applicable for the next design of the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) country profile for China, these legal requirement are further converted into packages, classes and attributes by referring to the ISO 19152 standard. The existing databases of the Chongqing Municipality are used to support the modelling process. The paper concludes that the legal requirements can be used as a foundation for an integrated system in China.