LandInfra, InfraGML and Land Administration
with Cadastral Surveying and Cadastral Documentation

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) in August 2016 appproved the Land and Infrastructure Conceptual Model Standard (LandInfra). 'The scope of the Land and Infrastructure Conceptual Model is land and civil engineering infrastructure facilities,' including road, railway, survey, alignment, and land division.
'Land provides the environment upon which infrastructure facilities exist.' Land division comprises administrative divisions (e.g. jurisdictions) 'as well as interests in land (e.g., land parcels, easements, and condominiums).' The standard also 'regards the surveying needed to locate infrastructure facilities on the terrain in compliance with interests in land.' cf. http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/landinfra

InfraGML encoding standards, Parts 0 - 7 incl were approved by August 2017 and published September 2017, cf. http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/infragml. 'Part 7 of InfraGML focuses on the land upon which infrastructure facilities are built. Information about land parcel ownership, administrative boundaries, and easements is critical to infrastructure designers, as they need to understand what land is available for use and if any additional land will need to be acquired before construction. Traditional 2D cadastre is supported, as well as the newer 3D land ownership exemplified by condominiums.' (http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/2577).

The above OGC standards address the domain of Cadastral surveying and Cadastral Documentation, which from the 1970s fall within the general notion of Land administration.

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) in 2012 issued the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) ISO 19152:2012. 'The LADM is a conceptual model, ..' 'The purpose of the LADM is not to replace existing systems, but rather to provide a formal language for describing them, so that their similarities and differences can be better understood. This is a descriptive standard, not a prescriptive standard.' It is 'based on the conceptual framework of ‘Cadastre 2014’ of the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) [14];' (https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:19152:ed-1:v1:en). Motivation, standardisation, application and further development is described 2015 in an article of Land Use Policy by Peter van Oosterom and Christiaan Lemmen.

Relations between LandInfra and LADM
are described in Annex D.2 of the LandInfra conceptual model standard. The Summary reads: 'The scope of LandInfra is land development and civil engineering infrastructure facilities. The emphasis of LandInfra on infrastructure and on surveying suggests minimizing as far as possible the legal-administrative aspects of land development. This is achieved by modelling what is needed to account for the surveying related activities, including defining the legal entities, the boundary of which are measured, as well as identification of the signing parties.

The scope of LADM reflect that mapping and recording of land parcels often developed in service of the State, predominantly in terms of taxation. Standards need cross-national English technical terms, a challenge addressed by LADM. The narrower scope of LandInfra fits the notion of ‘cadastral survey’, an Anglo-American concept which relates the mapping of land parcels primarily to the securing of proprietary interest in land.'

Relations between OGC/LandInfra and ISO/LADM
In September 2016, the OGC called for public participation in its newly-established Land Administration Domain Working Group (Land Admin DWG). Recent status of activities are available for OGC members through Land Administration DWG Report to TC at 102nd OGC Technical Committee, March 21, 2017, Delft, The Netherlands.

During the March 2017 LandAdmin DWG meeting in Delft, I made the presentation: Harmonization of standards - The ISO 19152:2012 LADM-family. This is being followed up through the paper 'International code list management - The Case of Land Administration', to be presented at The 7th Land Administration Domain Model Workshop, Zagreb, Croatia, 13 April 2018  by co-author Jesper Paasch.

During the FIG Working Week 2017 in Helsinki, Finland, revision of LADM was announced, and the role of OGC LandAdmin DWG was presented through Christiaan Lemmen, Kees De Zeeuw and Peter Van Oosterom (Netherlands): Further Development of Operational Standards in Support to Land Administration (9033) [abstract][handouts].  - At the ISOTC 211 plenary meeting in Wellington, New Zealand, Nov. 2017, the Stage 0 project for the revision of LADM was initiated, and Chris Body, Chair of Standards Australia’s Geographic Information/Geomatics Committee and Co-Chair of OGC’s Australian/New Zealand Forum, appointed as coordinator.

Implementation of LandInfra /InfraGML

The Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) facilitated by UN-Habitat has developed a number of LandTools, which among others regard Land Administration and Information. Referring to the Core Cadastral Domain Model, a step in the development of the above-mentioned LADM , the need of a pro poor land information tool in terms of aSocial Tenure Domain Model (STDM) is motivated.‘The STDM is a ‘specialization’ of the ISO-approved LADM. ..’ ‘The concept of the Social Tenure Domain Model is to .. .. provid[e] a standard for representing ‘people – land’ relationships independent of the level of formality, legality and technical accuracy’(http://stdm.gltn.net).

In the above-mentioned presentation in Delft, I noted that that standards need be tested to convince the user community of its interoperability benefits. It would be obvious to use the technical platform, which is applied by STDM, for testing of InfraGML. This could provide the basis for discussion of a structuring of modules or plug-ins. Some modules might be shared between developing, emerging and industrialized economies, while other modules needs be specialized for the specific needs of the society concerned.

A QGIS user conference, QGIS 2017, took place August 2. – 11.  2017  in Nødebo, Denmark. This triggered my proposal of two abstracts: QGIS for Recording of Land Parcels and Real Property Units, and A Birth Certificate for project QGIS4BoundarySurvey?  both to be presented August 3, cf. QGIS 2017 Program. The realized versions are QGIS_Standardization_LandParcels0108.pptx and QGIS4BoundarySurvey0108.pptx.

In a Report back on the 3rd QGIS Conference, Tim Sutton, in the section: QIGS as a cadastral management platform, among others called for building a generic toolset for cadastral management in QGIS. My first steps are reported in QGIS for Cadastral Management.

Erik Stubkjær, est@land.aau.dk - 2018-03-15; 2017-10-04; 07-20; 06-03, 01; 05-31, 15.