Practically all European countries are today working on the prob-
lem of automating relevant land records – first and foremost cadastres
and land register. The main reason is not to achieve integration, but ra-
ther to make very important by-product. No
country has yet achieved
the complete automation of its cadastral/land registration systems. But
this is merely a question of time. Sweden is probably the country
which has come further in constructing an automated , on-line, inte-
grated system of cadastral, land registry, land taxation and population
records. Most European countries are definitely on their way in the
same direction.
Another clear trend is the conversion
of land-related information
into spatial systems. The information must be precisely located in or-
der to be of greatest use. One method is made by geocoding. If the
land unit is assigned coordinates in the natural grid, all land-related in-
formation can be spatially defined.
The system used by Sweden, for
example, introduces the co-ordinate of the central point of the land
unit as well as the co-ordinate of the principle building – graphically
determined – into the cadastral records. If in future all boundary points
were determined graphically or numerically by coordinated, and the
coordinates were inserted into
the cadastral database, this would, of
course, make possible a similar spatial determination of information.
This is what is now happening in the most European countries.
Starting with the most highly urbanized areas, the cadastral maps are
increasingly being digitized. This is motivated mainly by the great op-
portunities it creates for using the same
database for producing maps
in different scales in a flexible way. At the same time the manual pro-
duction methods can be automated. This is a natural step in the age of
automatic data processing.
Digitization also renders a solution to the need, common to all Eu-
ropean
countries, of integrating cadastral data with data on utilities.
Utilities such as water, sewerage, electricity and telecommunication
are becoming increasingly complex; demands
for efficient mainte-
nance and management are increasing; and there is always danger that
utilities will be damaged during different kinds of excavation. For
these reasons, there is an obvious need for a total approach to the sur-
veying and recording of utilities. Utilities will be a natural element in
the
system of digitized, automated land information.
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