As diversified as are the motives for the setting up
of land information systems so diversified are the
respective starting situations. The developing coun
tries find themselves before the task of building up
the required information systems for the first time
as rapidly as possible and of keeping them up-to-
date. Serious difficulties may arise with reference to
the required financial means and the training of the
necessary technical staff. The highly developed
countries however, have to adapt existing systems
to the present requirements of quality. Structures
depending on history will have to be pulled down
and the legal and juridical circumstances have to be
adapted to the new requirements.
Although the kind of difficulties to be overcome is
varied and is defined by the situation of any
particular country, the aim pursued can be defined
uniformly: collecting, processing, storing and re
trieving of the necessary information regarding the
landed property.
Main problems
A great deal of the members of the organizations
cooperating within the F.l.G. is concerned with
land data and many are engaged in the develop
ment, improvement and operation of supporting
instrumentation and software. In almost every
F.l.G. member-nation the collecting and processing
of the data takes place in a decentral way. This
decentral approach has many advantages for the
efficiency of the process of collecting and processing
of the data. In this case the form of the acquired
data as well as the quality can be well attuned to
the relative limited goals for which the data are
collected.
The new techniques, particularly the new computer-
systems, have enormous possibilities to match and
aggregate data and to exchange information among
different systems. However many of the existing
land information systems are indexed and filed in
a way that does not facilitate data retrieval by users.
The matching and aggregation of data and the
exchange of information is often difficult or im
possible. Up till now little has been done to esta
blish compatible standards for the vast amounts of
data that are being collected.
The coordination among organizations responsible
for developing land information systems does not
exist in most of the cases and in some cases not
even within individual organizations. If we do not
want to loose the advantages of the decentral and
"small scale" collecting of data and if at the same
time we want to draw the full profit of the enormous
and "large scale" possibilities the new technical
tools are offering us, the creation of common stan
dards is necessary.
A modern land information system can only func
tion properly if the information is defined unequivo
cally, arranged systematically and related to a
uniform basis. In most of the F.l.G. member-nations
there is no agreement on the specifications for the
basic spatial unit nor are there classifications for the
attributes to those base units.
So the two main problems we have to face in
modern society when building up a modern land
information system are:
- The relative small scale of the collection of the
data and the much larger scale of our technical
facilities. This is an organizational problem.
- The differences in form and quality of the data
caused by the small scale and decentralized way
of the collecting of the data.
Activities within the F.l.G.
As a matter of course within the F.l.G. attention has
always been paid to the topic land information
systems. In some way or another in each of the 9
F.l.G.-commissions attention has been paid to the
problem of collecting, processing, storing and
retrieving of land data. Until recently nearly always
it concerned the small scale problems. The problems
which are emerging in the stream of invited and
personal papers do not only reflect the wide scope
of the activities of the surveyor, but also the lack
of coordination and the lack of common standards
in our geodetic world. It was not until recently
that within the F.l.G. the special problems of modem
land information systems got more attention.
During the 13th congress of the F.l.G. in Wiesbaden
we find reports on the plans for a "new land data
bank". Notably mr. Wallner from Sweden reported
on the Swedish "New Land Data Bank".
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