The land administration is currently one of the countries main challenges. It is not a new aspiration, since its function is more than explicit in the Constitution main articles and the various laws that govern the people relationship with public and private national resources. However, there is an international trend for the national systems creation to strengthen a national policy in which can be taken advantage of the benefits now offered by technology, the globalization requirements and of course the inhabitants demand by the public s0ervices efficiency.
I’ve been well informed that Colombia is currently in the ISO 19152 adoption process, known as Land Administration Domain Model. The LADM, more than being a global applicability standard, is the result of the many specialists consensus in the property management field, drawn from the study concerning on how different countries of the world make this as a result of the Declaration in 1998 which said about cadastre traditional schemes replacement by the models use. This is the main reason why the LADM can not be unknown by professionals linked to the Sciences of the Earth and in the Colombian case as you might expect, is not being seen itself as a solution but from a spatial semantic standpoint, like a facilitator for a national policy implementation for managing not only the land rights but in general for the differents nations properties.
I mention the Colombian case, because we will have to keep an eye on their progress, as an interesting exercise that will undoubtedly be visible beyond the Latin American context. In the first phase that started in the second half of 2015 has not only shown the challenge which involves aligning different institutions related to the material and immaterial nation goods management; also leaves out the obvious leadership and maturity which have acquired institutions as the Agustin Codazzi Institute, the Notaries and Registration Superintendence, and the influence of international cooperation seeking best practices internationalization.
GeoSmoke in the LADM seems a wise decision, in front of challenges involved in mainstream planning and standardize instances actions as the Programme of Rural Property Formalization, Land Restitution Unit, the Colombian Institute for Rural Development INCODER and decentralized cadastres that in some cases seems to me have better conditions than the national instance to the need for adapting to the changes.
International trends in land management.
I must insist that land management is not a science that is unknown to the Cadastre – Registry – Land Use Planning professionals majority; it will be novel the fact of UML models understanding on which occurs the LADM standard and the way how to materialize an institutional scheme that already exists to technology platforms presence and to existing operating. So that, to complement this article, I rescue the irreversible trends value in the land administration field that have been presented in one of the current phase workshops and that I just can make comments that border on the edge of the obvious but which represent the Colombian process main challenges.
The updating of information processes decentralization, from the central levels to local governments, under a responsibility perspective not only for cadastre tax but also legal.
- The transactional systems incorporation through which the ownership relations operations are controlled among the stakeholders, including the Government in objects that represent public interest rights. An interesting aspect of this trend is that centralization does not imply more bureaucracy, since it is complemented with the first trend, in which transactions operators are local governments, private entities and individual persons; but operating on national control transactional systems.
- The databases use with history of administrative and geometric data modelled both in spatial versioning as the documentary sources storage. This implies not only make territorial research or management plans but model its summary to have aplicability on state property and with reference to its current version
- The standardized data models use regardless of technology platforms, adopting standards that conceptualized the logic model which comes from both the physical model and processes; regardless of whether proprietary or free software is used.
- model-oriented Architecture, known in English as MDA (Model driven architecture). Nothing simple aspect, by the urgency of the human interface to feed data and the dying risk at the time without early wins that would justify the change of mentality costs
- Land Rights Integration, soil use and land planning, simplified in the Law-Subject-Right, but expanded to a scheme that allows to see the rights relationship beyond what the law explicitly defines and which may be applicable to tangible and intangible property.
- Cadastre vision from a life cycle viewpoint, with the obligation to think in 3D, that although it is not a display urge to the failure to finalize the 2D coverage, should be incorporated even at the administrative level by the urban intellectual property urgency and the need to be ready for the 4 d, not only from a BIM standpoint but because time relationship only occupies automation.
- The orientation toward simplicity and ease of use, which implies decriminalize the World Bank proposal to complete the world cadastre in the short term using point-plot as urgent base but integrated to the property registry, relegating the precision for a future when we will have time and -money-. Then, perhaps we realize that the world has done the rest as the OpenStreetMap style.
- The multidisciplinary integration of persons linked to the land administration, each one making what corresponds, in their system, but replicating a data exchange model under the interoperability standards. Of course, this implies not see technology as an end in itself but as a way an already known goal; It implies to be adding gradually actors, avoiding disposal experience specialists due to its incompatibility with the technology, but also enhancing the young resource to be ready to take over on the route that will certainly take several years.
The Colombian challenge with the LADM
I suggest as a general application mental exercise, follow up to what will Colombia do, which being honest, don’t have it easy, but that will political will and persistence by the nation high objectives will surely take advantage of the opportunities arising now – that other countries already would like to have – among which are glimpsed:
- The public law incorporation as one more record that squeeze the cartographic wealth and converts it to rights, restrictions and responsibilities both for public entities and private parties.
- The development of multipurpose cadastre pilot projects, under a cadastral tab simplification vision by delegating responsibility for updating data.
- A node’s land administration conformation within the Colombian infrastructure of spatial data ICDE, model, which goes beyond the standardized data geoportals provision.
- The methodologies update that simplify the local governments performance and the central policies dependence, especially in relation to cadastral valuation, but also the opening to surveying methods, simplifying the “cool” of the complexity and precision by the preeminence of maintaining updated data.
- The tenacity by battling with the polygon, given the inevitable scenario in the country to use ESRI almost like a God geomatics version and the stubbornness of the ISO-19152 smoked to keep the arc-node as the only primitive way of explaining the universe.
- The Cadastre and Registration integration in a unique transactional system, where is possible to see not only who is a natural/legal/public person but also bound duties on immovable property, its geometry and legal and administrative charges. This challenge, beyond the institutional transformation – which is not urgent-, implies a mentality change in the records global vision, as a State responsibility, beyond the urgent projects intervention with good intention but with aspiration to converge on national interest public policies.
· The international visibility of an inactive LADM to the particularities of what for many years have made Colombians.
The wish list is endless and the good sense of the real, even utopian. But that same feeling happened to anyone 14 years ago when his mentor facilitated two documents that have changed their world seeing way; especially if these documents were FIG Cadastre 2014 proposal draft and the Chrit Lemmen abstract “Core Cadastral Domain Model“.