The Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) Is Becoming to an International Standard – the Proposal Passed Vote at the ISO TC 211 Meeting

Quebec City, Canada, 2-6 November 2009

In the beginning of 2008 FIG submitted a proposal to develop an International Standard concerning the Land Administration Domain to the Technical Committee 211 on Geographic Information of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO/TC211). The proposal received a positive vote from the TC211 member countries and a project team started to work on the development of the standard. The proposal was based on many years of discussions on this subject within FIG and from the input of several workshops and from many experts in this field worldwide. A first version of the LADM was presented at the FIG Congress in Munich in October 2006.

The International Standard intends to provide an abstract, conceptual schema with five basic packages related to (1) parties (people and organizations); (2) rights, responsibilities, and restrictions (ownership rights); (3) spatial units (parcels, buildings and networks); (4) spatial sources (surveying); and (5) spatial descriptions (geometry and topology). It enables the combining of land administration information from different sources in a coherent manner. The LADM can include informal and customary rights. It should be noted that there can be no interference with (national) land administration laws.

Within TC 211 many issues and comments have been discussed during several meetings held with a project team composed of 21 delegates from 17 countries. The Chair of this team was Christiaan Lemmen on behalf of FIG and editor was Harry Uitermark, also on behalf of FIG. Most developing countries are not members of TC211. For this reason UN-HABITAT was represented in the project team by Solomon Haile. A significant contribution to the development of the standard has been provided by the research community of ITC and TU Delft (especially Prof. Peter van Oosterom) from The Netherlands.

There was a positive vote at the 29th Plenary Meeting of ISO TC 211 in Quebec City in November 2009 on forwarding the ISO 19152 Land Administration Domain Model as a Draft International Standard (DIS). An Editing Committee is working now on the DIS, which is expected to be available in March 2010. The final International Standard is expected in 2011.

FIG expects this standard to be accepted and supported by a wide community. It can then form the basis for software development and for data exchange of land information. In this way the LADM can contribute in the development of flexible land administration systems.

Christiaan Lemmen

15 December 2009