Initial Design to Develop a Cadastral System that Supports Digital Cadastre, 3D and Provenance for Singapore

Abstract

It is challenging to design and develop a cadastral system that supports digital cadastre, 3D and provenance. Digital cadastre encodes cadastral information in digital format like LandXML, which allows for automation and returns high productivity. 3D enables capturing and representing the third dimension, which is critical for the development in both above and below the earth surface. Provenance allows the management of cadastre through lifespan. This is important in cadastral investigation and analysis for being informed how a cadastral parcel is being evolved over certain time period. The paper discusses the initial design of a new cadastral system called Cadastral Survey Management System (CSMS). The paper shares the SG LandXML, a Singapore profile of LandXML, which is designed based on the ICSM’s ePlan model, which in turn has been implemented in Australia and New Zealand. SG LandXML will consolidate the existing forms and data in different formats and to facilitate automation. By having a pre-validation mechanism at the Registered Surveyors’ (RS) Web Portal, the submissions by the surveyors through the Portal can be checked upfront before the authority’s inspection and approval. This will reduce turnaround times and speed-up the overall approval process. The fundamental of the system is the cadastral data model, which is designed based on the ISO 19152 - Land Administration Domain Model (LADM). The notion of BeginLifeSpanVersion and EndLifeSpanVersion in LADM has been adopted to design the provenance framework for the system. With the framework, every parcel when it is first submitted to the system will be date-stamped and the changes to the parcel will be captured for the parcel’s entire lifespan. This will allow the system to retrieve a parcel from its inception and to compare its changes over times. The paper also demonstrates some preliminary investigations on how different types of parcels, both 2D and 3D, can be integrated based on the notion of Level of Details from city modelling. The paper proposes methods how different types of parcels can possibly be encoded in SG LandXML to support 3D Cadastres.