The Cadastral and Land Information Systems for an Effective Land Governance

Introduction

The cadastral system is the basis used for the protection of the property by means of registration procedures and cadastral plans made from geodetic operations and surveying. Each parcel or property and its owners are registered and all the spatial structures consisting of location, boundaries and contents are graphically described in a cadastral map or digitally stored in a database. It may be a systematic or a sporadic and official description of properties affording information on real estate. The cadastral data need to be collected, managed, analyzed, and rationally stored to facilitate their retrieval. After being processed, these data become land information that allow users to make analysis and plan future projects. Recently, there is pressure to develop a modern cadastral system based on the information technology to create a unique reference for land properties as geometrical features and land tenure as attribute information. For many reasons, the cadastral system is a fundamental key providing accurate information about the lands and their attributes. It is a basis for establishing national geo-information infrastructure. The data are the basic resources of the information that is the fundamental key for all decision-making. The collected data in a manual or digital form are stored and processed in order to produce information, which may be analytical or graphical result. The aim of the information is to facilitate analysis, retrieval, and updating processes. The quality of the information depends largely upon both the quality of data and the quality of processing systems. The technological tools used to manage and process data include the so-called Geographic Information System (GIS) that facilitates collecting, modeling, and managing, analyzing and storing spatial and non-spatial data. Spatial data are lines, surfaces, or volumes and they have their positions located by a coordinate system. Whereas non-spatial data are specific attributes characterizing spatial data. The GIS tools enable spatial searching, overlay operations, spatial analysis and modeling. Several GIS applications have been developed dealing with many different data. A kind of applications or computerized systems based on this technology is Land Information System (LIS). The land information systems have the benefits to serve society on a long-term basis and on a long-term return on investment by taking in account both the static and dynamic components of land. The static aspects are the norms and values adopted in society to define rights and to record existing land tenure, value, and use ascertained by adjudication process and mapping. While dynamic aspects are the changes that affect the relationship between man and land according to the changing nature of land rights, land value; and land use.