Digital transformation of public land administration services in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

“The dedicated and successful work on the establishment of digital, accurate and up to date property registers (real estate cadastre, land cadastre and land registry), address registers and sales price registers has attracted many stakeholders. By enabling continuous activities on data integration and interoperability, these significantly contribute to secured tenure rights, an efficient and transparent property market, the European Union (EU) accession and consequently to overall economic and social development and growth.”

Željko Obradović, Director, Federal Administration for Geodetic and Real Property Affairs
 
Together with its partners, the Federal Administration for Geodetic and Real Property Affairs is playing a key role in delivering digital transformation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including improving the land administration system and facilitating digital public services.

The establishment of accurate and up to date spatial data registers has attracted many stakeholders and enabled continuous activities on data integration and interoperability. Data and metadata standards, procedures, and policies are also used to promote coordination among national data.

By the end of 2021, more than 2 million land registry folios had been incorporated in the electronic land registry thanks to the systematic harmonisation of real estate data between the land registry and the cadastre. As a result of the project, funded by the World Bank, more than 57% of these folios are now based on the new cadastral survey as opposed to baseline of 30%. In addition, the digitisation of cadastral data has created the database of real estate cadastre (RECDB) which currently covers 72% of the Federation and, following the establishment of IT system used by local tax authorities and municipal staff, the Sales Price Register (SPR) data was published for public and other users with close to 65,000 individual transactions displayed publicly.

Benefits

• Provides online accessibility to all available cadastral and land registry data of the Federation.
• Establishes an up-to-date official Address database with full coverage expected by the end of 2023.
• Improves efficiency in the national land administration system through the exchange of data via web services with other governmental authorities and local government.
• Prevents duplication of data and issuing of incorrect data from unauthorised sources through the digital transformation and electronic provision of services.
• Achieves integration and interoperability of data among different institutions to enable simplification of existing services and development of new modern customer-oriented services.

Supporting sustainable land development in Albania

“About 80% of Central and Local Government decision-making directly affects the territory and having digital topographic maps helps tremendously in the planning, development and monitoring activities of many institutions in Albania.”

Lorenc Çala, General Director, State Authority for Geospatial Information

Albania’s State Authority for Geospatial Information (ASIG) has delivered a new topographic map to support sustainable land development in the Tirana-Durrës Area. Covering around about 300 km2, the 1:2 000 scale digital map was part of a major project conducted with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The training and technology transfer has increased ASIG's capabilities for photogrammetry, accuracy and quality management, as well encouraging the use of geospatial information in the infrastructural and social development of the country.

All central and local public authorities that base their activity on geospatial information, such as ASIG, the public authorities responsible for geoinformation topics, municipalities and any other central and local institution that needs to use topographic maps, are benefitting from the data.

Following the completion of the project, Geospatial Information for Sustainable Land Development in the Tirana-Durres area in Republic of Albania, ASIG has started the preparation of the 1:2 000 scale base map into the western part of Albania.

Benefits

• Supports the development of the country's infrastructure based on the general development plan of Albania.
• Contributes to the implementation of development plans, feasibility studies, detailed projects, as well as environmental protection.
• Improves sustainable development in the context of economic growth, social infrastructure and living standards.
• Helps to understand the current situation and analyse trends for: geographical features of the terrain, condition of infrastructure, condition of properties, general conditions along the coastal area and developments in urban areas.
• Helps in rapid urbanisaton of areas with irregular development due to demographic movement and rapid population growth in recent years in the Tirana-Durrës area.
• Promotes product use by government agencies, business companies and citizens.
• Provides analysis for gradual changes over time.
• Enables cartographic generalisation of maps, for example 1:5 000 and 1:10 000 scale, using the 1:2 000 scale topographic urban map.

Austrian geoportal uses FAIR principles to deliver open data

“We want to promote the further use and processing of our spatial data at both national and international level. After all, this results in a high benefit for the economy and society. This is why the BEV has created the necessary technical infrastructure with the portal data.bev.gv.at so that the data of the BEV can be used accordingly as open data.”

Wernher Hoffmann, President, Federal office of Metrology and Surveying (BEV)

Benefits

• Enhances security using the distributed cloud strategy and relieves the infrastructure from download peaks.
• Supports a common understanding of rights and obligations when using the data thanks to the Creative Commons CC-BY-4.0 licence which follows legal regulations.
• Increases economic efficiency by reducing duplication of effort through the mutual development of the geoportal software - common requirements are implemented once and many be adopted to varying needs of different stakeholders, which again are used by the whole community.
• Embedding of the DataCite DOI allows for a clear, transparent and sustainable addressing of datasets in an increasing data lake.

Open Maps For Europe Case Study

The Netherlands Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency (Kadaster) is using Open Maps For Europe to develop  a series of tactile maps for navigating by touch.

“Our aim is to make all geodata from Kadaster available and accessible to everyone. For blind and visually impaired people, the best way is to create tactile maps. Open Maps For Europe provided an easy way to access official topographic data from different countries and apply the production process we have developed for The Netherlands to other parts of Europe.”

Daan Rijnberk, Kadaster

Read full case study

Laser scanning research generates benefits for society in Finland

“Autonomous vehicles often include a large number of on-board sensors to observe the dynamic environment all around the vehicle. When practically all vehicles will be equipped with high-quality mapping sensors in the future, remarkable amounts of data could be acquired from urban, traffic and road environments on a continuous basis. If these big data can be exploited beyond the real-time processes of each car, completely new possibilities will open up in the field of dynamic modelling of the 3D road and traffic environment.”

Arvo Kokkonen, Director General, National Land Survey of Finland

National Land Survey (NLS) Finland has developed its own autonomous car within the Academy of Finland-funded Centre of Excellence of Laser Scanning Research (led by Prof. Juha Hyyppä) and started to research autonomous big data as a possible way to provide road environment data for mapping in the future.

NLS Finland built a research platform for autonomous driving, named ARVO (Autonomous Research Vehicle Observatory). ARVO is a Ford Mondeo Hybrid equipped with DataSpeed ADAS Kit allowing the car to be controlled by signals programmed from Robotics Operating System ROS. 

The car is already equipped with perception sensors, such as Velodyne VLP-128 lidar, located in the centre of the roof. Four other laser scanners, radars, sonars, GNSS-IMU navigation system and various cameras are located at the windscreen. The concept architecture for ARVO is that it can process/store all data inside the car in two ways: using post-processing scenarios and using near-real-time scenarios. 

Autonomous driving will influence societies and human life globally, altering the ways of working and living, and thus presents open questions for us all to solve.

Benefits

• Autonomous fleets will be able to carry out about 75% of the tasks related to mapping in the 2030s, increasing the resource efficiency of mapping, keeping data updated and influencing resource-wise decision-making.
• Increases the frequency of national geospatial information updates, which has an impact on enhancing decision making with real-time information gathered from the road.
• Fosters knowledge-based growth in Finland with demos for the Finnish industry using the data, and models acquired for various civil engineering applications.
• Data acquisition via autonomous vehicles significantly lowers the costs of applying 3D mapping in the smaller communities that typically have been outside the scope of 3D city modeling.
• The project allows Finland to improve the national awareness, knowledge and adaptation in this area.

Integrating government data across sectors (Denmark)

“Being in the core data business, we are committed to use our data and knowledge to support policy development. We are working to support the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement with specific national initiatives. Our new strategy considers the challenges of climate change and addresses the need to modernise public administration to keep up with the challenges. To support the major transitions happening in society, we believe that data must be interoperable and freely available for use and reuse across public authorities and sectors.”

Kristian Møller, Director General, Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency (SDFE)

The Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency (SDFE)'s commitment to deal with important societal challenges, supported by its new strategy, leads it to public sector programmes outside of the geospatial domain, while building on its geospatial “heritage".  This has resulted in a close cooperation with the energy and utility sector, and two recent examples showcase its role as data integrators across the public sector.

Supporting the Danish Climate Act on reducing carbon emission by 70% in 2030, SDFE has brought data and knowledge to the table, and through a combination of core data and sector specific data, created new instruments to deal with climate change.

In 2020 a new Utility Portal which provides easier access to utility data across Denmark, was launched in a cooperation between the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utility and the three data owners. SDFE is responsible for the operation of the portal. It will collect a number of different data about and from the utility sector. Initially, economic key figures for electricity distribution and water utility as well as technical data on energy-producing units. The portal will be extended with more data sets on the utility sector on an ongoing basis.

Benefits

• The portal will improve transparency in the utility sectors through better access to data in a common format, while at the same time facilitating the tasks of the authorities by a single access to data.
• For authorities the portal will be a significant contribution supporting their endeavor to coordinate and optimise utilities across Denmark.
• The open distribution of utility sector data will also help to create a breeding ground for innovation and new business models in both the public and private sectors.

Another recent initiative is the Building Hub, which aims to collect and disseminate data on buildings and their energy consumption in order to create a stronger basis for the implementation of energy efficiency improvements in buildings. Information on energy consumption, building construction and weather will be part of the data collected for calculations.

Benefits

• The Hub will directly support energy efficiency in society as well as in public buildings, utilization of flexible consumption and reduction of the buildings' climate footprint. The value in a socio-economic perspective is estimated up to €50 million per year.
• The citizens (building owners) get easier access to data via the hub, providing information how to make the building more efficient and what potentials the building has to offer in relation to flexible energy consumption.
• Companies can use data for targeted offers for the implementation of efficiencies for building owners, as well as better data for developing new solutions for energy efficiency and climate improvement of buildings.
• Authorities will be able to create better framework conditions for promoting energy efficiency in society in general as well as for public buildings - reducing carbon emissions

Increasing efficiency with new ways of working during Covid 19

“The Danish Geodata Agency’s (DGA) employees have been incredibly professional and have quickly adapted to the new reality of working from home. The success is based on the digital transformation in property registration that has been going on since the 1980’s and infrastructure was prepared for it.”

Pia Dahl Højgaard, Director, Danish Geodata Agency

The Danish Geodata Agency (DGA) has significantly reduced the backlog of cadastral changes to be registered, despite employees working from home as a result of Covid-19.

Due to its well-developed digital infrastructure and qualified employees, the quick and efficient transition to homeworking was completed in just one day. Resources were allocated to provide all employees with a well-functioning IT workplace in their home. Although not physically present in the office, people remain connected and continue to share knowledge through virtual meetings.

DGA has fully digitised its property registration and formation management. As a result of this transformation to full digital management, the cases and data for updating the cadaster are now fully digital and exchanged digitally between DGA’s employees, the registered land surveyors and the municipalities.

Benefits

• The case processing time has decreased from 101 days (as of January 2020) to 37 days (as of January 2021).
• The number of backlog cases waiting to be processed is significantly smaller.
• Citizens and companies experience faster processing of cadastral cases, which benefits the whole society.
• Full digital exchange of cadaster update information.
• Virtual meetings focus on joint problem-solving and knowledge sharing among employees, tremendously increasing competence.

Continuing to provide services and deliver projects throughout the Covid-19 pandemic

“The pandemic has tested our ability to respond to changing conditions. We have found new ways to maximise our activities and continue to provide services that are important to the public and to the Czech economy.”

Karel Večeře, President, Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre

The Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre (ČÚZK) has continued to provide registration and information services to the public throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

Activities continued without major restrictions and problems, with progress also being made in important development projects. ČÚZK’s multi-annual plan for the systematic updating of cadastral documentation technical data with revisions and new mapping was successful. Approximately 1.5 % of cadastral areas are revised in this way every year to ensure accuracy.

The digitisation and automation of territorially-oriented projects of the public administration, in particular in the area of spatial planning and construction proceedings, also continued. One such project is delivering digital technical maps of regions (DTM).  ČÚZK is the creator of the legislative framework and of the technical specifications for all regions to ensure a uniform approach to this nationwide project. It is also administrator of the digital map portal the of public administration (DMVS) where the DTM of regions, together with cadastral maps and Orthophoto CR, will be available. Basic viewing, downloading and processing services will also be provided.

Benefits

• Uniform creation, administration and updating of information on the technical and transport infrastructure in the regions.
• Administered in single regions but shared as database information within the Czech public administration.

In accordance with the DTM and DMVS projects, an amendment to the Land Surveying Act was prepared in 2020. This only creates the basic legislative framework for them, but also regulates some principles of land surveying activities.

Benefits

• Implements EU Directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information.
• Delivers graphic data of the real estate cadastre, including indexes, as open data.
• Increases datasets available as open data in the future - the basic database of geographical data, generalised geographical data at scales of 1:50 000 and 1:250 000, high-resolution Orthophoto CR (12.5 cm) and a full range of digital raster equivalents of topographic maps.

Cyprus DLS-Portal, a Model for Geospatial Innovation

“This innovative on-line platform is based on an Integrated Land Information System which includes more than 350 ISO regularly monitored and certified procedures. It is a focal point in the history of modern cadastre and geospatial information, and the culmination of a long time effort of the Department to provide e-services to citizens and integration of geospatial information”.

Andreas Hadjiraftis, Chief Lands Officer, Member of EuroGeographics Management Board.

DLS-Portal is a pioneering online services platform developed by the Department of Lands and Surveys (DLS), which has received one of Cyprus’ highest distinctions, and was named best Public Sector Innovation by the Federation of Employers and Industrialists (OEB) Innovation and Research Awards.

DLS-Portal is the first and largest online electronic library of geographic and descriptive information, in Cyprus, and is considered to be one of the best European Cadastral and Geospatial information provider. It provides access to the Department’s information and enables citizens to submit online applications, export data and catalogues, direct access and download maps, subscribe to services, and more. At the same time, it is a model for the implementation of INSPIRE Directive and collects a variety of geospatial data from several Departments and Services of the State.

DLS-Portal consists of four main pillars:

• Citizen Portal: Dynamic front page providing a variety of information and services.
• Electronic Application Submission and Tracking System.
• Interactive Maps providing the ability to navigate to properties and geospatial features through a free on-line application, providing the flexibility to select any combination of information from a great variety of available GIS layers.
• INSPIRE Geoportal. 

Benefits

• Whole concept is based on a 24/7 fast and friendly service.
• Provides a variety of information and services, including the electronic submission and tracking of applications, via the dynamic front page of the Citizen Portal.
• Access to interactive maps allows users to navigate to properties and geospatial features and select any combination of information from the GIS layers.
• Contributes to the delivery and expansion of open data.
• Saves resources and time for the Department and citizens by eliminating time-consuming bureaucratic procedures.
• Provides an infrastructure for fast COVID-19 monitoring, and emergency services response.
• Improves public service transparency, reduction of bureaucracy, and promotion of equal treatment.
• Strengthens market and economic development.
• Builds on interoperability of data between IT applications.

Establishing a Spatial Data Infrastructure in Bosnia and Herzegovina

"Various projects in the field of land registration and administration have been implemented in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), resulting in a large amount of geospatial data. Data is kept in different institutions, which complicates access, as well as obtaining complete and specific information. For the faster connection of institutions, and thus the information they have, the FBiH decided to follow European experience in creating a common legal and technical framework for data integration - the establishment of a Spatial Data Infrastructure in accordance with the INSPIRE Directive."

Željko Obradović, Director & President of SDI Council, Federal Administration for Geodetic and Real Property Affairs (FGA)

Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) continues to take significant steps forward in the development of its Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI).

Together with the Council and Working Groups, the Federal Administration for Geodetic and Real Property Affairs (FGA) is responsible for establishing and maintaining the SDI.

The establishment of the SDI is a long-term process that will enhance the modernisation and efficiency of public administration, provide a basis for economic development, and enabl easier data manipulation, use and availability.

It is planned to further harmonise data, improve cooperation between state institutions, as well as knowledge, skills and improve capacities for the dissemination of spatial data, and to provide high-level hardware and software components. Adoption of the new law on SDI is currently in the adoption phase and will represent the legislative framework of the SDI, and ultimately contribute to easier accession to the European Union.

Benefits

• Data for 12 datasets has been harmonised according to INSPIRE standard.
• GIS Browser of the SDI Geoportal was published with the support of the Government of the Federation of BiH.
• The GIS Browser, together with the Catalogue of Metadata, the Register of IPP Sources and Subjects, as well as the SDI website, form one unit that represents the SDI Geoportal of the Federation of BiH.
• The metadata catalogue contains all metadata about the displayed spatial data, with 19 metadata entered so far.
• 54 SDI subjects and 109 data sources have been registered in the SDI Registers.
• All applications are accessed through the official website: https://ippfbih.gov.ba.
• Address data have been published for the first time on the SDI Geoportal with accompanying metadata for one third of municipalities that completed the establishment of the Address Register, which is established in cooperation with local self-governments and supported with donations from the Swedish government.