Technology and Land Administration: developments and innovations.
Consequently the strength of the model also lies in its explicit indication of the need for changes in strategy (which consequently refers to both the objectives specified for the organisation and for the ICT market-place) to be accompanied by changes at an operational level.
3. DEVELOPMENTS AND INNOVATIONS IN TECHNOLOGY.
3.1 Data Acquisition
Earth Observation Satellites, as the Landsat 5 and 7, SPOT, Ikonos, SPOT 5, Radarsat-1, Quickbird provide geo-referenced high resolution images used in mapping, city planning, GIS updating, agriculture, land use monitoring and in land administration.
New approaches should be investigated in relation to LiDAR (Airborne Laser Altimetry). Those systems, operating from an aircraft or helicopter, are multi-sensor systems consisting of a reflectorless laser range system and a positioning system. Combination of the results with tape measurements (street level) and GPS (inner side of the street blocks) could result in cadastral maps produced in an efficient way.
At data collection side, modern technology can be integrated with positioning systems. (Barodie 2004) recognises that effective upgrading of informal settlements requires accurate and up to date social and spatial information. (Home & Jackson 1997) use a point position (collected with hand held GPS) to relate the property identifier number, land cover, crop type, soil condition, and number of structures, etc. (Montoya 2002) combines digital video, GPS and GIS as a rapid ground data capture methodology from a car. Compare the use of the Cyclomedia system in some European cities or the use of video camera's for mapping from planes.
Technologies for 3D Lasermapping (Terrestrial Laser Scanning) for capturing from ground stations objects as 3D point clouds are rapidly evolving. Here are relations to developments of 3D Cadastres (Stoter 2004).
In 2010 the Galileo system (EU/ESA 2003) will be really available and will bring a second revolution in positioning. The GPSs problems in urban areas will be solved. Everything will be easier. Systems will be better integrated. The double number of satellites compared to GPS results in improved efficiency and location based services will get an enormous push. This development disserves much more attention in the cadastral (research) community.
3.2 GeoICT
Both theoretical and practical developments in ICT in general, and specifically the ubiquitous communication (Internet), Data Base Management Systems (DBMS) and modelling improvements, and positioning systems can improve the quality, cost effectiveness, performance and maintainability of cadastral systems. Further, the users and the industry accept the standardisation efforts in the spatial area by the OpenGIS Consortium and the International Standards Organisation (e.g. the ISO T211). This has resulted in the introduction of new (versions of) general ICT tools with spatial capabilities; e.g. eXtensible Mark-up Language/ Geography Mark-up Language (XML/GML), Java (with geo-libraries), Unified Modelling Language (UML), object/relational Geo-DBMSs.
The Open Geo-SpatialConsortium succeeded in the development and provision of a comprehensive set of OpenGIS standards related to spatial data management adopted by the GIS and database industries. All those standards support interoperability, data access to warehouses and easy data exchange. This creates new perspectives in both the development of new cadastral systems and in the improvement of or extension to existing cadastral systems. At the moment, the first Internet-GIS applications are already operational in a cadastral context.