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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