The land administration domain model (LADM) as the reference model for the Cyprus land information system (CLIS)

In this paper, the enhancement of the data model of the Cyprus land information system (CLIS), with the adoption of the land administration domain model (LADM) is examined. The CLIS was established in 1999, within the Department of Lands and Surveys, to support the operation of the Cyprus cadastral system and has met the majority of its initial set goals. It is however now broadly accepted that the CLIS should be improved and upgraded, and a new data model should be introduced to facilitate the manipulation and provision of data to internal and external users/ customers in a more effective way. The need to enhance the CLIS coincides with the introduction of the LADM, which is under development within the Technical Committee 211 of the International Organization for Standardization and identified as ISO 19152. The LADM provides an abstract, conceptual schema with three basic packages: parties (such as people and organisations), administrative rights, responsibilities and restrictions (such as property rights) and spatial units (such as parcels, buildings and networks), with the latter having one subpackage: surveying and spatial representation [6]. [Note: In this moment (January 2012), the LADM is at the development stage of Final Draft International Standard]. In this paper, the basic entities of the CLIS are presented and restructured, in a way to comply with the LADM. After analysing the characteristics of LADM, it is concluded that this is compatible with CLIS, and can be used as a data model framework for CLIS’s upgrade. Thus, the Cyprus country profile is proposed. The adoption of the LADM is a great opportunity for the Department of Lands and Surveys to introduce an International Organization for Standardization standard model, based on model driven architecture, and to gain all the benefits derived from such a movement. Such benefits include the improvement in the effectiveness and the efficiency of the current system and the expansion of the services provided by CLIS to the broader land administration system and to the Cyprus community. The new functionality includes: better structuring of the rights, responsibilities and restrictions (and related source documents); better fitting in the information infrastructure, both national (e.g. valuation, taxation, building, address and person registrations) and international (e.g. INSPIRE cadastral parcels); and future capabilities for representing three-dimensional spatial units (e.g. legal spaces related to apartment or utility infrastructure).