Commission 7 Annual Meeting
Bled, Slovenia, 12-16 May 2006
The FIG Commission 7 Annual Meeting 2006, was held from12 -16 May 2006 at
the Kompas Hotel in Bled, Slovenia. Because of the big FIG Conference in
Munich 8-13 October 2006, the Commission decided to hold only a short annual
meeting. The Meeting was organised in close co-operation with the Slovenian
Association of Surveyors and our Slovenian correspondent Mr. Roman Rener,
the Geodetic Institute of Slovenia and the Surveying and Mapping Authority
of the Republic of Slovenia.
In total 50 participants from 25 countries were welcomed by the
Commissions chair, Paul van der Molen. Amongst them Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Croatia, India, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro,
Portugal and Russia represented first time.
At the opening session the participants remembered during one-minute
silence Mr. Abdel Munem Samara, Jordan delegate and Director General
of the Jordan Department of Lands and Survey.
More than thirty short presentations were given, each of them motivating
the delegates for lively and professional discussions. The programme was
very intensive but high quality presentations and discussions provided
sufficient energy to the delegates.
The presentations included the developments in the member countries. It
can be observed that most countries are in a process of developing complete
digital cadastral and land registry information systems accessible by portal
systems over the Internet. Many countries already provide such facilities to
its citizens. In relation to these subjects as e-conveyancing, institutional
and legal impact, private-public partnerships, organisational consequences,
customer orientation, privacy aspects, security aspects, etc. were in the
focus of attention.
The developments in some of the West Balkans countries are very positive,
but in some cases there is still a road ahead. In most of these countries
there is a considerable inconsistency between the contents of the Cadastre
and Land Registry; substantial efforts are required to solve this.
A land taxation system presented from India was a promising example of a
cadastral application. Developments in Jordan could serve as an example for
neighbour countries. Introduction of Information and Communication
Technologies are related to capacity problems in many countries. On the
other side the IT offers more and more advanced new possibilities relevant
to the land sector.
The Commissions activities since the 2005 Annual Meeting, in Madison,
USA, were presented and discussed: the Symposium on Land Registration in the
Arab Word (September 2005, Jordan), the UN-FIG Expert Group Meeting on
Unconventional Approaches in Land Administration (December 2005, Thailand)
and The Symposium on Enhancing Land Administration for Economic Growth in
India (February 2006, India). Further – supported by the Commission: The
Latin American Conference on Cadastre (Colombia, November 2005) and the
Workshop on e-Governance (Hungary, April 2006).
Chair elect András Osskó presented the Commission's Draft Workplan
2007-2010. Key topics of attention for the Commission remain: advanced
cadastre, developing land administration, creating secure land tenure, tools
for land management and application of innovative, advance technology in
land administration. New challenges are in: sustainable development, post
conflict problems (civil wars, tribal conflicts, disasters, etc.), rapid
urbanisation in the developing world and increasing gap between developed
and developing world. The Commissions Working Groups are proposed as
follows:
- Working group 7.1 - Development of pro poor land management and land
administration
Chair: Christiaan Lemmen, The Netherlands
- Working group 7.2 -Creation sustainable land administration to support
sustainable
development Chair: Soeren Christensen, Denmark
- Working group 7.3 - Application of innovative technology in land
administration
Chair: Daniel Steudler, Switzerland
Mika Törhönen, FAO Rome, is willing to give active support to the
Commission and Working Groups. The new chair: András Osskó will be
supported by Gyula Iván as Vice chair of administration and Mária
Tóth, Secretary.
During the last session the delegates were invited to the next Annual
Meetings, to be held in Italy, 2006 and Korea 2007. Both invitation were
guided by impressive video’s, the video from Verona, Italy even contained a
very nice film impression of survey activities.
The annual technical excursion of the Commission was to Ljubljana
Cadastral Office and to the Cadastral office in Postojna – in this city also
the Land Book Office was visited. It was very clear that our colleagues in
Slovenia made substantial efforts in digitising their cadastral maps and
registers. Impacts of all this were discussed.
As part of the Annual Meeting, a 1 day Symposium on geo-information for
local governance was been included in this Annual Meeting. The complete
title of the symposium was “Spatial and development planning for more
efficient use of resources in the local community with examples of good
practise from Slovenia and member states of the European Union". The
symposium was held in Celje on May 16th; three members of the commission
gave a contribution – on ‘Local Governance and Real Estate in a Market
Economy’, on ‘Geoservices’ and on ‘Land Consolidation’.
All presentation and further documents are published at:
www.fig.net/commission7/bled_2006 and
www.oicrf.org
We look back to a very successful event.
Paul van der Molen Christiaan Lemmen Pauline van Elsland
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