AUSTRIAN CADASTRE AND DATABASE ON REAL ESTATE FULLY OPENED TO THE PUBLIC

Ernst Hoeflinger, Innsbruck, Austria

ABSTRACT

One of the bottlenecks in running a land information system is the access to data. FIG expressed in its resolutions that public agencies should open their registers, map series and data bases to the greatest extent possible and that they apply pricing policies which do not exclude relevant users from access to information and from realizing the potential of modern GI technology.

Starting in 1978 by the year 1992 all the cadastre records, the land registry, all controll points and boundary points had ben stored in the data base on real estate. Digitizing and storage of the 260 000 cadastral maps has been completed to a 70 per cent.

Nowadays all interested authorities, licensed surveyors, notaries, attorneys-at-law, local government and credit institutes have direct access to these data at reasonable costs using a 7000 terminals in their offices.

In order to get better access FIG recently recommended the execution of the following measures:

• Governments should elaborate data models for related distributed data bases;
• Administrators of public data bases should open them up for on-line-access;
• Organisations should find more reasonable and cheaper concepts for data distribution;
• Authorities should offer to the public electronical communication.

In Austria all these measures are in the way of execution. Recently it was set up a new administrative network using distributed knots as a backbone. This distributed data processing concept makes data transfer cheaper.

In the next future this network will be opened as well to private users. By July 1997 everybody - and not only those who have legal or professional interest - will have the possibility to get direct access to the database on real estate via PC and telephone line, without needing any permission.

The main principle of the Austrian cadastre and land registry , since its introdution in the last century, reads: Cadastre and land registry are public, everybody has access to it and can have inspection of it.

Up to now the general public could only exercise its right of access to the data by visiting the local courts or cadastral offices.

This principle will be now fully executed via electronic communication available to everybody through public networks in a flexible, easy to use and cheap way.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG

Eine der Schwierigkeiten bei der Führung eines Landinformationssystems ist der Zugang zu den Daten. Die FIG hat betont, daß die öffentlichen Dienststellen ihre Register, Karten und Datenbestände weitgehend der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich machen sollen und solche Preise gestalten sollen, die Benützer nicht vom Zugang zur Information und von der vollen Nutzung moderner GI Technology ausschließen.

Die im Jahre 1978 begonnene Verspeicherung des Katasters, des Grundbuchs, der Fest- und Grenzpunkte in der Grundstücksdatenbank konnte 1992 abgeschlossen werden. Die Digitalisierung und Verspeicherung des Inhalts der 260000 Katasterpläne ist zu 70 % erledigt.

Seither haben alle interessierten Behörden, befugten Vermessungsingenieure, Notare, Rechtsanwälte, Gemeinden und Kreditinstitute direkten Zugang zur Grundstücksdatenbank zu günstigen Kosten über 7000 Terminals in ihren Büros.

Die FIG empfahl für den leichten Daten-Zugriff folgende Maßnahmen:

• die öffentliche Verwaltung soll Datenmodelle für verbundene, verbreitete Datenbanken ausarbeiten;
• die Verwaltung der öffentlichen Datenbanken sollen diese für einen on-line-Zugang öffnen;
• die Organisationen sollen sich bemühen, angemessene und billige Konzepte für den Datentransfer zu finden;
• die Behörden sollen der Öffentlichkeit die elektronische Kommunikation anbieten.

In Österreich sind alle diese Maßnahmen in Ausführung begriffen. Kürzlich wurde ein neues Verwaltungsnetzwerk errichtet, das auf verteilte Knoten aufbaut. Dieses Konzept verbilligt den Datentransfer.

Dieses Netzwerk wird demnächst auch den privaten Benützern zugänglich. Seit Juli 1997 kann jedermann - und nicht nur jene, die ein rechtliches oder berufliches Interesse haben - direkt die Grundstücksdatenbank mit PC und Telefon, ohne eine Bewilligung dazu zu brauchen, einsehen und benützen.

Das Grundprinzip des österreichischen Katasters und Grundbuchs lautet seit seiner Einführung im vergangenen Jahrhundert: Kataster und Grundbuch sind öffentlich, jedermann hat Zutritt zur Einsichtnahme.

Bis vor kurzem konnte das breite Publikum sein Zugangsrecht nur beim Besuch der Bezirksgerichte und Vermessungsämter ausüben. Dieses Recht ist nun voll ausübbar mit den jedermann zur Verfügung stehenden Kommunikationsnetzen auf einfache und billige Art.

INTRODUCTION

By decree of the Austrian Federal Minister of Economic Affairs of 24 June 1997 everybody is granted direct access to the cadastre and the land registry data base via the public services of Telekom Austria AG, Datakom Austria AG, IBM Network Services and Bundesrechenzentrum GmbH.

Rates for this direct access to the databases are vavourable: The rate for the contents of one screen-page of alphanumerical data or of the digital cadastral map in raster version is ATS 3.30 (US$ 0.28). The contents of one screen-page of vector data of the digital cadastral map is available at ATS 15.00 (US$ 1.20). That corresponds to about US cents 0.02 resp. US cents 0.08 per character transmitted. Users are charged for these rates with their telephon bills.

So since the beginning of July 1997 the database on real estate is fully opened to the public at reasonable cost.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Austrian cadastre came about as the result of a unified boundary survey, based on a geodetic control network, in the first half of the nineteenth century. Subsequently, the land register was established as a legal guarantee for real estate, where all parcels of land and the land-related rights were recorded.

Property of land and other rights concerning real estate can only be acquired through enrolment into these register.

The technical part of the cadastre consists of records based on parcel and property identifiers, control and boundary point information, and large scale maps. These data are all kept by the 68 federal survey offices. The property register, which is the legal part of the cadastre, is kept by the 186 local courts.

The Land Survey Law of 1968 led to a comprehensive reorganisation of the cadastral and national survey. The main task of the 68 federal survey offices became the maintenance and extension of a dense net of control points, the maintenance of the cadastre and the official mapping and charting. Licensed private surveyors are carrying out nearly all of the cadastral surveying and data acquisition both for land owners as well as government at local and state levels.

This cadastre has become a modern legal, multi-purpose cadastre, with maps, mostly in the scale of 1: 1000, and a land register which are both open to the public.

FIRST STEPS TO AUTOMATISATION

The constant increase of land transactions since 1950 was one of the reasons that led to the construction of a modern digital data base for real estate in 1973. After a successful small scale test over a five-year period, involving five percent of the data, the general collection and storage of the data for the cadastre began in 1978. lt was finished in 1984. By 1992 all data of the land register were stored in the digital database.

The database on real estate consists of several parts which are linked in one system. It works as follows:

• all entries are centralised: they are stored in a computer of the Austrian Federal Computing Centre;
• data of the cadastre and the land register are linked together;
• at the district cadastral offices and the local courts terminals consisting of a display unit and printer are connected to the Computing Centre. They permit output of data and update. Thus the maintenance of the system is decentralised.

Soon all 68 district survey offices and all 186 local courts had direct and permanent on-line access to the database for administrative use and to-satisfy public demand.

Permanent and direct on-line access to the database for interactive use is expensive and is only justifiable for official use. For professionals and institutions who wanted direct access in their offices cheaper methods of access were investigated.

Chosen was the Videotex system, which is cheap and provides the possibility of a graphic display. All the user needed is a telephone, a colour monitor, a printer, a modulator-demodulator set, and an intelligent decoder or PC.

At the beginning of 1984, the Videotex system was linked with the Austrian Federal Computing Centre, and a service made available. Since then authorised licensed surveyors, notaries, attorneys-at-law, banks, credit institutes, municipalities and other interested institutions had had direct access to the data base. All those users could connect their Videotex terminals with their computers, transfer data to their own systems and add and link their own data and set up their own databases.

ACCESS TO DATA

The tasks in land administration are in Austria executed by the following institutions

• land administration offices care for the legal tasks,
• the district cadastral offices provide the technical task,
• private licensed surveyors are offering the services for division of parcels and restitution of boundary points, and
• private notaries are offering their services for the transfer of rights.

In Austria every citizen has the right to fully inspect the land register and the cadastre. Only rights which are registered and recorded in both are valid. Only rights which are defined by law are able to be stored in the land administration registers.

Both, textual and geometrical components are stored in a centralised mainframe. On local servers are maintained the geometrical databases with a replication on the mainframe.

The database on real estate is a connected system of different database which hold

1. Textual data on 11 million parcels and 2.9 million owners and all rights related to them,
2. Data representing 55,000 control points and 257,000 intercalated points,
3. Data coordinates of 23 million boundary points,
4. Digital cadastral map as a geometrical database containing about 260,000 map sheets, most by in the scale of 1 : 1000 in A1 format, of which 117,000 are finished,
5. Data for the digitised administration districts, amounting about on million points,
6. A digital planimetric representation of the 230 maps of Austria, drawn to a scale of 1 : 50,000.

There are 700,000 changes in the 11 million parcels per year in legal and technical aspect.

The digitisation of the Austrian cadastral map was the last step undertaken to facilitate the economic and expedient management of land administration and is still going on. The advantages expected to arise from the new technology are

• to be independent of drawing materials and plotters;
• to be independent of map scales;
• automated maintenance of map;
• unlimited possibilities of presentation;
• the use of telecommication for decentralised dataprocessing;
• the possibilities to link map data with the data of existing databases.

There are three ways to access land administration data

• Graphical access through on overview window for selection as cadastral window or digital orthophoto or digital Austrian map 1 : 50,000, with the possibility of navigation;
• Spatial access via selected parcel objects which is mainly used during data maintenance, and
• Alphanumerical access via identifiers like parcel, parcel address, legal object, farm, agrarian plot, owner’s name.

Today 3,000 public institutions and 4,000 private offices are directly connected with the database on real estate.

From the beginning on a fixed connected closed computer network was used in order to have high security available. In order to reduce the high connection cost later on a distributed data processing concept was introduced, decentralising the net resources.

THE DATABASE FULLY OPENED TO THE PUBLIC

Due to the increasing demand for information relating to cadastre and due to the urgent need for the land data every citizen in Austria can get by the PC and modem unlimited access to the data base since July 1997. This meets the urgent requirements to get better recording systems of land inventory.

Access to data is an essential prerequisite for the establishment and maintenance of effective land and geographical information systems. Access is available through public networks that have maximum capacity.

Only a PC and a connection to the central database via network are as well necessary as technical equipment for the maintaining textual data. Within the district cadastral offices there is a LAN with a UNIX database server for maintaining the geographical database.

The Ministry of Finance established recently a Wide Area Network (WAN) for federal purposes. The basis of the WAN are 2 Mbps connection between the main cities with a substructure on district level.

For external users the former, by postal service offered, videotex service has been 1996/97 turned over to an ISDN access. These users get access via modem and telephone line to different servers connected with the real estate database.

There are three main categories of database users:

1. Traditional users ordering printouts,
2. Professional users ordering digital data on digital media like tape or CD-ROM, and
3. On-line users with demand for up-to-date information on real estate having as internal users access via WAN or as external users entering the system via public network.

Who are the users? The main internal users are sharing with the following portions per cent:

The per cent share of external users are:

The numbers of queries in million per year are

^* Not registered because on local workstations.

The earnings of the database on real estate are about ATS 100 million per year.

Actually, the development in access policy was not an easy one. You know that effective administration systems, as prevailing in developed countries, are often barries for the use of information. One of the main bottlenecks of LIS/GIS application i. e. the access to data issue has been cleared away.

OUTLOOK AND CONCLUSION

Hard- and software are changing at an incredible pace. So the database enables the users to access in an increasing comfortable way. The tasks to come are to provide methods to set up queries and to analyse data to improve user’s access to information in multiple ways independent form transport media.

Quick access to data will be a critical demand in our society. The knowledge how to use query-tools of database are growing in the same way as other services on daily life are automated.

The administrators of the database are watching the development of Internet. There should be no reason why not to use Internet for delivering data as soon as this medium is secure enough for safe transfering data.

It looks like the administrator of the database will turn over to a wholesale trader of land related data. The retail trade business will be left in future to the licensed surveyors.

The ability to access , to interact with and to contribute to a wide range of public and private databases at a distance become the norm in many areas of surveying. Again, this will change the skill-base of the surveying workforce, the structure of the organisation and the tasks of those surveyors holding managerial responsibilities.

The development of a Land Information System from an existing land record system is different in each country. It depemds on the existing system and on what a government wants the proposed system to become. If a country is already furnished with a parcel-based land registry and multi-purpose cadastre, based on a series of large-scale maps, and a reference co-ordinate system, the pursuit of state-wide regional planning and land management is comperatively easy.

The more you open up databases and make access to data comfortable at a favourable price to all interested parties, the more you get revenue, this financing high investement and running costs of your database, being the essential prerequisite to a Land Information System.

REFERENCES

Hoeflinger, E., 1993, From Cadastre to Land Information System, Proceedings of the 40 Congresso Nazionale, Consiglio Nazionale Geometri, Firenze 1993, CNG Roma Italy.

Hoeflinger, E., 1996, GIS-LIS froma GIS’s Point of View, IUSM Session No. SS03, ISPRS Congress Vienna Austria 1996.

Ryttersgaard, J., Enemark, S., 1996, From GIS to Geographic Information Management, Organisational and Educational Impacts, Proceedings of the FIG Commission 3 Seminar,
p. 97 - 104, Copenhagen Denmark 1996

Muggenhuber, G, Krieglsteiner, R., 1997, Customer’s Access to Cadastral Data, Proceedings of Joint European Conference on GI, p. 1036 - 1045, Vienna Austria 1997, IOS Press Amsterdam.

AUTHOR’S ADDRESS

Ernst Hoeflinger
P. O. Box 441
A-6021 Innsbruck, Austria
Fax: +43-512-581316-9
E-mail: geo.hoef@aon.at

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Ernst Hoeflinger is a surveying engineer consultant, his office being located in Innsbruck. He pursued his studies of surveying at the Technical University of Graz. There he acquired the degree of a Diplomingenieur (M. Sc.) in 1955.

Since 1961, with the assistance of his surveying office in Innsbruck, he has been doing all the working an counselling within the sphere of surveying and mapping, engineering survey and photogrammetry. He also operates as a juridical expert. Since 1968 he has been member of the executing committee of the Board of Engineers of the Tyrol and Vorarlberg (a legal community of interest) which he headed in the official period from 1978 to 1982. In the same period he was vice-president of the Austrian Federal Board of Engineers. In his capacity as member of the executing committee of the Austrian Society for Surveying and Geoinformation (OVG) he represents this society at international associations. He is an Austrian delegate to Commission 3 of FIG and to CLGE. He has made 60 + publications in the field of utility cadastre, multipurpose cadastre and land information systems and gave lectures on land administration and land information systems in various countries. 1994 he was made honorary member of OVG.