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2 Current Status of Cadastral Efforts While the need for an integrated land-information system, or multipurpose cadastre, has been set forth, implementation of improvement activity has been largely characterized by single-purpose approaches to only selected seg- ments of the total system. In other words, these efforts proceed without a concept of a land-information system as the foundation. This situation is evi- denced by the disparities in current efforts to improve land-record systems. Some of the more notable efforts are described in this chapter without at- tempting a comparative analysis. 2.1 THE UNIMPROVED STATE OF AFFAIRS Land-information systems in North America today can be characterized in general as title- and assessment-records systems, most of which have under- gone only relatively small changes in the last 100 years, and land-planning and -management systems which have evolved largely since the mid-1960's. Title- and assessment-records systems are labor intensive and do not pro- vide necessary information about the land in a timely, unambiguous, authori- tative, and economical manner. Land-management information cannot readily be integrated with title and assessment data. Foremost among the problems inherent in the current arrangement of these systems is that required informa- tion is generally not accessible in any one location (Ayers and Wunderlich, 1973; Clapp and Niemann, 1977). A study in Wisconsin, entitled Land Rec- 16
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 17 ords: The Cost to the Citizen to Maintain the Present Land Information Base, A Case Study of Wisconsin, was designed to report the costs associated with obtaining and maintaining governmental information about land. As reported by Epstein (1978), Wisconsin residents in 1976 paid approximately $17 per person ($34 per taxpayer) for information about the state's 35 million acres of land. At the county level, the form of land-title recording remains essen- tially unchanged from the 1800's. At the state and federal levels of govern- ment, many different agencies collect a great deal of raw data without effec- tive coordination or integration, thus collecting again and again the same basic information about essentially the same areas of land (Larsen etal., 1978). 2.1.1 Land Transfer The land-ownership system that has developed in the United States depends almost entirely on the recording of documents as evidence of land ownership and land-ownership transfer. A typical land-title-recording system is a register of evidence of title. Access to individual documents usually is obtained by searching alphabetical indexes of the names of grantors and grantees or by searching a tract index. The tract index is usually not a parcel index but an index by block or township. The location of a particular document in the register often is indicated by a numerical identifier that refers to the appro- priate volume and page of the register. Other times, the reference is a docu- ment number (Almy, 1979). Land-title recording typically is a function of county government, except in three New England states (Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont), in which it is a function of city and town governments. Hence, there are about 3000 land-title-record systems organized on a county basis and about 500 organized on a city or town basis. Land-title recording may be the responsibil- ity of a separate, often elected, official, such as a recorder or registrar of deeds, or the responsibility of the county, city, or town clerk or other official with additional duties. Estimates of the annual number of transfers of real property range between 4.5 million and 8.1 million (Almy, 1979). The efficiency of the system has been severely threatened by more wide- spread ownership of land, a faster turnover rate in ownership, use of the verti- cal space dimension in the division of rights in condominiums and for mineral and air rights, and use of the temporal dimension in which a single parcel, such as an apartment in a resort area, may have different owners for specified time periods of each year (Moyer and Fisher, 1973). Land-title recording and the related conveyancing process use and produce the most important data about land. There is an ownership turnover of nearly 10 percent of all parcels in the United States each year, resulting in transfer costs for real-estate brokers, attorneys, abstractors, title insurers, lending in-
18 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE stitutions, and other information service professionals. These costs in 1974 were estimated to exceed $17 billion in the United States for residential and farm real estate (Moyer, 1977). In addition, operation of land-title-recording offices and other government offices maintaining land-ownership information add substantial expenditures to the total land-record-system cost. In Wiscon- sin, for example,land-related data files maintained outside the recorders office include (Moyer, 1977) (1) delinquent taxes and special assessments (County Treasurer); (2) judgment liens, mechanic liens, and pending court actions (Clerk of Circuit Court); (3) judgment liens (Clerk of Special Courts of Rec- ords); (4) inheritance hens and probate proceedings (Probate Branch of County Court); and (5) zoning ordinances and building codes (County Clerk). A land-title record specifies a certain property right and identifies the per- son claiming the right. Each parcel of land has several current records that contain information about the status of title. Title records include various claims ranging from ownership based on deeds and wills and security interests based on judgments, mortgages, and construction liens to easements and util- ity rights of way. A transfer may occur in the entire bundle of property rights or one or more of them. In each land transaction, a complete examination of the status of the land title is usually required (Moyer and Fisher, 1973). Trac- ing the transaction history is performed typically by an attorney, an abstrac- tor, or title insurance personnel using the grantor-grantee index, tract index, or title plant. The recording process throughout most of the United States is primarily a manual operation, with not more than 15 percent of the jurisdic- tions reporting use of electronic data-processing equipment in 1971 (Bureau of Census, 1974). The basic elements of the recording process are (1) receiving and entering, (2) indexing, (3) transcribing and reproducing, (4) storage of work and secu- rity files, and (5) retrieving. The most important phase of the recording operation to the system user is document retrieval. The use of computerized indexes and microfilm reader- printers has significantly reduced the time and costs to local government for storing these records. However, the use of this technology has often, hi fact, delayed addressing the real problems of long-needed reform in both land-title- recording techniques and land-transfer processes. Over 25 percent of the jurisdictions still hand copy or type some of their documents. Although photocopying in one form or another is widely used, it is often expensive and poorly managed and involves much manual operation. In general, the methods used in the offices of recorders and registrars remain little changed from those of 100 years ago. Not only have most recording offices failed to modernize the procedures associated with conveyancing, but practically all of them also have failed to combine their functions with those of other local government offices (Ayers and Wunderlich, 1973).
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 19 2.1.2 Property Assessment Property assessors are responsible for (1) locating and describing properties, (2) appraising or estimating the value of properties, (3) keeping records link- ing properties to their respective owners, and (4) designating the official value of properties for tax purposes. To perform these functions, assessors collect, store, retrieve, and analyze information that is related to the ownership and use of land parcels. Separate files, linked by parcel identifiers, are commonly maintained in the areas of legal descriptions, property characteristics, market data, and ownership data (Almy, 1979). The basic framework of a property-tax system is established by the statutes of each state, with local government responsible for the administration of the property tax laws in all states except Hawaii, Maryland, and Montana. How- ever, Hawaii plans to revert to local administration of the property tax in about 1982. Largely because of overlapping assessment districts, the precise number of districts is not known. Recent estimates total 13,432, with 9205 at the township level, 1777 at the municipal level, and 2444 at the county level (Almy, 1979). Property taxes in 1977 produced six out of every ten mu- nicipal tax dollars and eight out of every ten county tax dollars, decreases of 14 and 12 percent, respectively, from fiscal year 1967. Property taxes ac- counted for 22 percent of all state and local general revenue in fiscal year 1977, down from a corresponding 28.6 percent in 1967 (Behrens, 1980a). Equitable assessment remains a primary concern; even as revenue shifts, in- flation and other influences on value estimation hinder its achievement. The first requirement of a good assessment system is a complete set of tax maps. Assessment maps are now required by law in 32 states. A standard parcel identification system is required in 14 states, and 15 other states have a rec- ommended system. State requirements provide a measure of standardization of assessment maps and parcel identfiers within states. There is, however, little evidence of standardization among states. Computerization of assessment maps has been limited to system develop- ment in a few locations. Computerization of assessment records, on the other hand, has grown significantly since the mid-1960's. Results from a survey made in 1975 indicate that over 70 percent of assessment districts make use of electronic data-processing equipment, with the responses revealing a high correlation between computer use and jurisdiction size. Of those districts making use of the computer, over 70 percent are involved in the printing of assessment rolls and valuation notices, over 11 percent support the appraisal process (e.g., regression analysis), and nearly 7 percent are devoted to sales analysis, including assessment-ratio studies (Almy, 1979). The need exists for improved cooperation between the offices of assess- or and the recorder or registrar of deeds. Both handle much of the same
20 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE land data and normally occupy offices in the same government building. Consolidation of data files and handling activities would greatly assist the modernization process. 2.1.3 Land Management Land management encompasses a broad range of activity that revolves around the land-resource assessment, planning, and regulation processes including zoning. In addition to policy decisions in connection with the management of land and environment, local communities, particularly cities, need detailed land data by parcels and points for the day-to-day operation of their street, water, and sewer departments and the administration of building, zoning, and other land-use ordinances. Many land-management information systems have been developed since the mid-1960's to support regional, state, federal, and private decision making. In most cases these systems are highly automated. They are designed, how- ever, to meet requirements that are limited in scope. While land ownership and valuation are important factors in land management, much of the data of concern, such as geology, soil and vegetation types, available natural resources, flood plain areas, wildlife habitats, and other environmental patterns, are not naturally attributed on a land-parcel basis. Therefore, these data are often organized using a grid cell structure, based, for example, on a selected cell size such as 2% acres. The principal flaw is that systems covering the same geo- graphic region are not able to integrate their land information. Duplication of data and gaps in data lead to waste in spending and to decisions based on in- adequate information (Clapp and Niemann, 1977). Significant in the data-collection process for land-management-information systems have been the volumes of remote-sensing data collected since 1972 by the Earth Resources Technology Satellite and Landsat systems. The 185 km x 185 km photographic coverage of a single frame is a useful format for multi- county urban planning agencies, often organized in Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas. 2.1.4 Private and Public Boundary Surveys An area of concern, as property values escalate, is the general poor quality of existing property boundary surveys and records. A reliable boundary survey, properly recorded, serves again and again as the basis of legal reference with each succeeding transaction, thereby relieving future buyers from that por- tion of escalating costs due to resurveys. But, precise boundary surveys are costly, which presents the present land owner with the unfortunate dilemma
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 21 of bearing the entire cost for such a survey even though the land parcel may be sold many times in a decade. The failure to distinguish between precise and unreliable surveys or the dif- ferent classes of survey reliability of land records and to attach proper warn- ing signals to plats further aggravates the problem. Mulford (1912) stated that in the solution of boundary problems, no general rules can be laid down and that "each man must work out his own salvation." Unfortunately, even today, established accuracy standards are seldom enforced. Also, because of the ab- sence of a cadastral survey authority, isolated land surveys, where standards are adhered to, are of limited value to the general public. Thirty states have been created out of the public domain and are function- ing under the Public Land Survey System. Millions of acres have been deeded to private owners since 1785. Modern subdivision and suburban land develop- ment tend to move away from the rectangular boundary system toward ir- regular boundary lines for private land holdings. Precise surveys in such cases are more difficult to achieve, but in all cases there is an urgent requirement for accurate property boundary referencing procedures. The Bureau of Land Management estimates that over 50 million acres in the western states are urgently in need of resurvey. This is due in part to fraudulent or inadequate original surveys done prior to 1910 (Committee on Appropriations, 1979). A 1977 Agricultural Department audit of the Forest Service land line loca- tion program found that failure to locate and mark boundaries properly had resulted in over 50,000 cases of trespass on national forest lands. It was esti- mated that it will cost $112 million to resolve those problems (Committee on Appropriations, 1979). 2.2 PROBLEMS The problems that characterize current land-information systems may be categorized as those of accessibility, duplication, aggregation, confidentiality, and institutional structure (Larsen etal., 1978). Accessibility problems arise when a government official or private citizen cannot obtain information for a variety of reasons. The information may sim- ply not be available, or an unreasonably lengthy search is required. Specific gaps exist in what is known about the land, or how the land or water is actu- ally being used. Who owns the land? Are all lands identified and assessed for taxation purposes? The information to answer these questions may not be held by public agencies. Too often the data are structured in poor classifica- tion systems with data arrangements and files that limit access to existing
22 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE information. Specialists often do not know the extent of publicly held land information. Information rightly available to the public can often only be retrieved by specialists and therefore is only available to those who have the financial resources to ferret it out. Some government information is so in- accessible that it is nearly "confidential." Ultimately, public and private land decisions are made in ignorance of the facts. Duplication problems occur when the same land information is collected and/or maintained by two or more governmental or private entities. One or- ganization is not aware of what land data another may already have or is planning to collect in a mutually suitable time frame. Data classification sys- tems are not compatible between user agencies, thereby resulting in the judged need for duplicate coverage. The obvious result of duplication is excessive waste. Aggregation of land information is a problem resulting from the fact that our current information systems are generally not designed to serve the needs of individuals, while continuing to meet the needs of local, state, and national agencies. Information is often gathered at the national or state level, with products provided to smaller governmental units. However, at the county, town, and municipal levels, where basic decisions are made, the prevalent re- action is that state and federal products are too general or inappropriate in scale, resolution, and information detail. The flow of information downward occurs because we have problems integrating records at the local level. These problems prevent the aggregation of information upward. Different types of data relating to the same geographic area are described in different ways. Physical land data describing the geology and soil type, for example, are gen- erally not related to land parcels, as are land title and assessment. Problems of confidentiality occur because access to some segments of a land-information system should legitimately be restricted. Concern over these restrictions, and the ability of a system to guarantee them, limits the infor- mation available to the system. In addition, unclear or conflicting standards specifying just how public so-called "public information" really is lead to var- iation in the accessibility of information. Institutional problems arise from the apparent mismatch between the typi- cally vertical structure of existing governmental organization and the inher- ently horizontal nature of land information. For example, in state govern- ments there typically are several offices organized around land-related tasks such as property assessment, highway planning, and solid-waste management. Each of these offices requires land information, and each typically maintains its own system separate from the others. In the private sector, parallel opera- tions also exist within the utility companies and title insurance companies, re- sulting in further duplication of information-systems activity (Larsen et al., 1978; Epstein, 1978).
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 23 2.3 IMPROVEMENT ACTIVITY Recognition of the need for improvement in land-information systems has re- sulted in activity for nearly two decades at local, state, and federal levels of government, in the private sector, and within meetings of concerned profes- sional organizations. Recent activities for improvement of land-information systems among professional organizations began in the early 1960's. There followed the Tri-State Conference in 1966 at the University of Cincinnati College of Law (Cook and Kennedy, 1967) and in 1968 the Mackinac Work- shop in northern Michigan (White, 1968). Also in 1968, the Canadians con- vened their first general conference on the subject at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, New Brunswick (Canadian Institute of Surveying, 1968). In 1972, the Conference on Compatible Land Identifiers-the Prob- lems, Prospects and Payoffs was held in Atlanta, Georgia (Moyer and Fisher, 1973), and a second Canadian Conference was held in Ottawa in 1974 on the Concepts of a Modern Cadastre (Canadian Institute of Surveying, 1975). In the fall of 1974, the North American Institute for Modernization of Land Data Systems was incorporated and held its first conference in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1975 (North American Institute for Modernization of Land Data Systems, 1975). A Land Records Symposium was then held in Orono, Maine, in 1976 (University of Maine, 1976), a joint Symposium on Modern Land Data Systems was conducted by the American Congress on Sur- veying and Mapping and the American Society of Photogrammetry (1977) in conjunction with their annual meeting in March 1977, and in October 1978 the North American Institute for Modernization of Land Data Systems (1979) held its second North American Conference. The Land Information Institute had its organizational meeting in March 1978 and later joined the Surveying and Mapping Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers (1980) to cosponsor a Specialty Conference in June 1980 on The Planning and Engi- neering Interface with a Modernized Land Data System. The forum of these conferences has provided a means of idea exchange and an opportunity to monitor some of the projects in which improvement activity is being implemented. In general, however, implementation of im- provement activity in the United States has been characterized by single- purpose approaches to selected elements of the total system. These efforts have addressed specifically the problems in land transfer, property assessment, or land management. Only tangentially have the problems related to the ref- erence frame, base maps,.and cadastral overlay been considered. Numerous efforts elsewhere in North America are under way in continuing attempts to modernize land-information systems. The largest and most com- prehensive is the Land Registration and Information Service of the Maritime Provinces (New Bruswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) in Canada.
24 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE Other Canadian efforts include the Province of Ontario Land Registration Infor- mation System; activities in the cities of Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta; and the City of Toronto's Central Property Register, an operational computerized file system referencing all property-related data from assessment and taxation records to zoning regulations and building permits. In Mexico an automated, multipurpose land-record system has been under development for over a decade. 2.4 STATUS AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL The following paragraphs describe the complexity of the federal activities in the three basic components of the multipurpose cadastre-reference frame, base maps, and cadastral overlay. Primary responsibilities for geodetic control, base maps, and cadastral surveys of federal lands are clearly assigned to the National Geodetic Survey, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Bureau of Land Management, respectively. However, there are many other federal agencies whose programs require geodetic, mapping, and cadastral support and that maintain land information and data files. Strong efforts are being made toward effective coordination. Various pro- posals have been made for the consolidation of the major groups into a single groupâa civilian agency for mapping, charting, geodesy, and surveyingâyet no action has been taken. For the three basic components of the multipur- pose cadastre-reference frame, base maps, and cadastral overlayâto respond to a single land data system, it is essential that the key federal services be uni- fied. The strategy of the federal government with respect to a multipurpose cadastre must include recognition of this need for reorganization plus the requirement for enabling legislation that would delegate the lead authority for each of the basic components. In an effort to achieve the maximum coordination within the present orga- nizational structure for these activities, the Executive Office of the President, through its Office of Management and Budget, has designated lead agencies for two of these functionsâgeodetic surveying and topographic mapping. The Administrative Directive, Office of Management and Budget Circular No. A-16 (4/21/75, #1753), fails to recognize the fundamental role of the Public Land Survey System. This omission, plus others, would suggest the need for a major revision of the document. We recommend that the Office of Management Budget designate a lead agency for the multipurpose cadastre. 2.4.1 Geodetic Reference Network The Office of Management and Budget Circular No. A-16 does recognize "Na- tional Networks of Geodetic Control," assigning the responsibility for coordi-
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 25 nation to the Department of Commerce, which has in turn assigned this re- sponsibility to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The geodetic and related surveying activities of the federal agencies are coordinated through a Federal Geodetic Control Committee, with representation from various agencies such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Defense Map- ping Agency, the Federal Highway Administration, the Forest Service, the International Boundary Commissions (U.S. representatives), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Soil Conservation Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The U.S. Geological Survey, as the representative for the Department of the Interior, transmits the re- quirements of the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. The Federal Geodetic Control Committee Coordinator is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NO A A) Assistant Administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Services, and the Deputy Coordinator at present is the Director of the National Geodetic Survey in the National Ocean Survey of NOAA. To conform to the directives of the Office of Management and Budget Cir- cular No. A-16, the Federal Geodetic Control Committee (1974, 1980) has published two documents: (1) Classification, Standards of Accuracy, and General Specifications of Geodetic Control Surveys and (2) Specifications to Support Classification, Standards of Accuracy, and General Specifications of Geodetic Control Surveys. The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) has the re- sponsibility for the development and extension of the national horizontal and vertical control networks and provides technical direction to federal, state, and local agencies for field surveys. Most of the primary work is accomplished by NGS personnel. A great amount of the secondary work, which is referenced to the national nets, is accomplished under cooperative agreements with other federal agencies or with state groups. Supplemental surveys, which are made by the U.S. Geological Survey for its mapping programs, by the Bureau of Land Management for its cadastral survey of Alaska, and by the National Ocean Survey for nautical charting, are reviewed for quality control and adjusted into the national networks by the NGS. The results are then made part of the geodetic data base. The Federal Highway Administration, through its close liaison with state highway depart- ments, is a primary user of geodetic control and contributes to the national geodetic data base. The Washington office of the Federal Highway Adminis- tration encourages the state and local offices of the respective highway de- partments to take an active part in these programs, and by such action can contribute to the effectiveness of a national cadastre. The planning of new highway routes, the acquisition of property, and the monumentation of the rights of way benefit from and contribute to the national geodetic data base.
26 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE The maintenance of these geodetic networks is a significant task. The loss of monuments due to natural causes or to acts of man exceeds 5 percent per year. The NGS with its limited field force is unable to keep up with this main- tenance and so seeks the cooperation of other surveying and engineering groups (federal, state, local, and private) in re-establishing these marks. If it is known that a survey monument is to be destroyed because of construction, its coordinates and/or elevation can be transferred to a new monument at a small fraction of the cost of resurveying from a distant point. In addition to classical surveying techniques, analytical aerotriangulation and Doppler satellite and inertial surveying systems can be used for densifica- tion of control. These systems provide positions in three dimensions and promise to be of economic benefit for the development of a multipurpose cadastre. The Global Positioning System, to be fully operational in the mid- 1980's, will also provide an accuracy in three-dimensional positioning of a small fraction of a meter with only 2 or 3 hours of observing time. An engineer who is providing the control surveys for a local project will frequently criticize the federal system for the lack of control near his project. This is especially true for land surveyors. The recommended spacing of pri- mary and secondary control generally conforms to the value of the land. The minimum density for various orders of control as specified by the Federal Geodetic Control Committee (1974) is much less than that suggested by McLaughlin (1975) and Ziemann (1976a) for the support of an ideal national cadastre, but actual needs should be reviewed and specifications prepared. To meet the requirement for closer spacing of geodetic control, local (or state) governments seek the cooperation of the federal government. Recent examples of cooperative programs are those between the NGS and Cook County, Illinois, and the NGS and the states of Connecticut and Georgia. A similar cooperative program is described in Section 2.6.3.1. The data incorporated in the horizontal and vertical geodetic networks have improved with the development of more-precise instrumentation; appli- cation of corrections for systematic effects; and improvements in observing, computing, and analysis techniques. To provide a more consistent geodetic network, the NGS has undertaken new adjustments of both the horizontal and vertical control networks. It is anticipated that the new horizontal datum for North America will be available in 1983; the new datum will involve a shift in latitude and longitude at each control point. In addition to new lati- tude and longitude, coordinates in the State Plane Coordinate System and the Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinate System (standard 6° zones), in feet and in meters to 1983 and only in meters after 1983, will be available for each horizontal control point. The new adjustment of the vertical control net- work will be completed at a later date.
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 27 2.4.2 Base Maps Under Office of Management and Budget Circular No. A-16, "the Department of the Interior is responsible for the National Topographic Map Series ... in- cluding governmentwide leadership in assuring coordinated planning that all mapping activities financed in whole or in part by federal funds contribute to the National Topographic Mapping Program ... ." Within the Department of the Interior, this responsibility has been assigned to the U.S. Geological Sur- vey (USGS). In cooperation with other mapping agencies and with profes- sional societies, National Map Accuracy Standards have been developed (American Congress on Surveying and Mapping and American Society of Civil Engineers, 1972). In 1978, in support of the national program, 38 states and Puerto Rico had cost-sharing cooperative agreements for selected mapping in their respective jurisdictions. The 7.5-minute topographic map series, 1:24,000 scale (1:25,000 for new metric series), is currently the primary USGS series and provides the principal source material for the multipurpose cadastre base- mapping program. Another source of information is the 1:24,000-scale ortho- photoquad series, a basic type of photoimage map prepared in the USGS 7.5-minute quadrangle format. Photoimage maps at 1:2400 scale were also produced for four pilot project areas to demonstrate utility as an urban-area base map (Baxter and Mattingly, 1975). A set of guidelines for large-scale mapping has been prepared by USGS based on studies of these projects. In further support of the national cadastre, special reference is made to the USGS program for establishing a digital cartographic data base. By 1979, there were more than 3000 files of 7.5-minute elevation model data. In addition to the topographic mapping responsibility of the USGS, their Resource and Land Investigations (RALl) program has been concerned about the availability of adequate land-use data and land information within govern- ment for land and resource planning and management. As part of this concern, RALI funded a project with the Council of State Governments to identify problems with USGS mapping and data-collection and -dissemination systems for the purpose of making recommendations for improving federal responsive- ness. Case studies in Texas, Connecticut, and Wisconsin were selected. The National Ocean Survey produces nautical charts of the coastal areas and the Great Lakes. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funded a pilot project (1969-1974) to produce Flood Insurance Maps for the coastal flood plain. Storm Evacuation Maps have been prepared for the National Weather Service. In cooperation with the USGS and state agen- cies, the National Ocean Survey has produced maps (1:10,000 scale) along coastlines, depicting the high-water line. The hydrographic surveys of the off- lying areas and the photogrammetric surveys along the shorelines provide
28 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE sources of data essential for a national cadastre. The National Ocean Survey, in cooperation with the Federal Aviation Administration, produces a broad series of aeronautical charts; the cartographic data base for these charts also contributes to a national cadastre. The Corps of Engineers, through its civil works construction and mainte- nance programs, has a broad requirement for various types of mapping. The maps that are produced can contribute directly to a national cadastre, partic- ularly with respect to property boundaries and related problems. Likewise, a national cadastre could contribute significantly to the preparation of such maps and to other local requirements associated with construction projects. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, through its organization by Divisions and Districts (representing local or regional rather than national programs), could be one of the major federal groups utilizing a multipurpose cadastre. Other federal agencies preparing and using similar scale maps include the Soil Conservation Service, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the For- est Service, National Park Service, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Bureau of the Census. The excellence of the technical capabilities for producing large-scale maps and charts has been demonstrated. The budgetary support has been good but could be greater. Cooperative programs with state and local governments have been established. Mapping and charting techniques have been highly auto- mated, making use of extensive cartographic data bases. In spite of these achievements, there remains a requirement for more very-large-scale mapping to support a national cadastre. The needs are local (or state) rather than na- tional. The map series should be of the order of 1:1000 or 1:2000 (some planners suggest 1:500 in densely populated areas). The federal agencies can give guidance to the counties and states. Federal funds could be made avail- able to initiate and sponsor these activities at the local level. 2.4.3 Cadastral Overlays The third component of the multipurpose cadastre system is the cadastral overlay. The primary federal agency involved in cadastral surveying is the BLM, which is responsible for the survey of federally owned lands (approxi- mately one third the area of the United States) and for the Outer Continental Shelf. When practical, these surveys are referenced to the national geodetic network. As an example, in Alaska, where the BLM has the responsibility for approximately three fourths of the area of the state, several Doppler satellite receivers are being used to tie the rectangular land system to the geodetic net- work. The agency has also purchased three inertial survey systems for estab- lishing intermediate points within the Doppler network. The BLM also provides direction and coordination to the state offices of
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 29 its organization or to special state groups that it has designated. The plats, maps, field notes, and other data relating to the Public Land Survey System, which are available as public records in the state offices, are essential to a multipurpose cadastre. Other federal agencies involved in cadastral surveying, such as the Forest Service and National Park Service, perform such operations under BLM direction and coordination. The BLM, in response to the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976, formed an automation data-processing steering committee, which cre- ated a Strategic Plan for Information Systems Management. This plan was further strengthened by the creation of the Bureau Resource Information Management Systems (BRIMS) concept. BRIMS uses cadastral overlays based on coordinates. In May 1979, this Bureau instructed its 12 field offices to make direct geodetic ties from all new rectangular surveys to the 1927 North American geodetic horizontal control datum, and this policy is now being im- plemented. The BLM also initiated, in October 1979, three projects in George- town, Colorado, where they are investigating the requirements for classical geodetic and Doppler satellite surveys in support of the May 1979 instruc- tions. Plans to implement BRIMS include the testing and evaluating of inter- active computer support at Georgetown, Colorado. The Denver Service Cen- ter Branch of Micrographics will conduct tests of available digitizing systems in the scanning of field notes and plats. Long-range plans caD for computer storage of digitized federal-land-status information for graphical display use with flat-bed plotters. 2.4.4 Improvement Implementation at the Federal Level In the United States at the federal level, the Urban Information Systems Interagency Committee (USAC), chaired by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was established in 1969 and supported demonstration projects to develop complete or partial Integrated Municipal Information Sys- tems in six cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000. Charlotte, North Carolina, and Wichita Falls, Texas, were selected to develop complete systems. Reading, Pennsylvania, was chosen to develop an information system for physical and economic development of local government; Long Beach, California, for public safety; St. Paul, Minnesota, for human resources; and Dayton, Ohio, for finance. Approximately $22 million of local, state, and federal funds were invested over a 5-year period in the USAC demonstration projects, providing experience for later efforts in multipurpose land-informa- tion systems (Hemmens, 1975; Mover, 1977). Among the program benefits, it can be noted that the system now in operation in Wichita Falls makes it possi- ble for the assessor-collector to conduct assessment-sale ratio studies annually, citywide and by neighborhood.
30 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) of 1974 directed HUD to establish and place in operation, on a demonstration basis, model sys- tems for the recordation of land-title information in a manner to facilitate and simplify land transfers and mortgage transactions and reduce the cost thereof, with a view to the possible development of a nationally uniform sys- tem of land-parcel recordation. This RESPA Section 13 program has been funded at a level of $2.5 million for two phases over a 2-year period. Phase I, covering state-of-the-art research, was carried out by Booz, Allen and Hamil- ton (1978), resulting in several research reports. Phase II provided for the dis- semination of the research findings through seven model systems projects funded at $100,000 to $400,000 each. Sites selected were St. Louis, Missouri; Final County, Arizona; Warren County, Ohio; three counties in North Caro- lina; the Southern Middlesex Registry in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Summit County, Colorado; and Hennepin County, Minnesota. Reports from these demonstration projects are scheduled for September 1980. With the enactment of the International Investment Survey Act of 1976, there was also recognized the special difficulty of obtaining information on direct investment in real estate, and provision was made for study of the feasi- bility of establishing a nationwide multipurpose land-data system. The Eco- nomics, Statistics, and Cooperatives Service of the U.S. Department of Agri- culture has carried out the feasibility study based on an evaluation of four alternative scenarios in terms of technical, economic, administrative, legal, and institutional criteria and constraints. The following four alternative sources of information on foreign investment in U.S. real estate were con- sidered (Moyer et al., 1979): Type 1. A centralized federal registration system with the burden of re- sponsibility of registering on the foreign entity or his representative. Type 2. A federal system utilizing available sources (Securities and Ex- change Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Internal Revenue Service) to which foreign investors may already be or would be capable of reporting. Type 3. A national multipurpose land-data system, including data on for- eign direct investment, oriented to local government records, principally tax assessment but including title records, land-use records, and county offices of federal agencies. Type 4. Periodic statistical surveys, to provide standard nationwide data on land ownership, such as those of the Bureau of Census and the U.S. De- partment of Agriculture rural land-ownership survey. The study report was completed in October 1979, but to date the conclusions have not been published. The U.S. Bureau of the Census conducts a national sample survey of much
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 31 of the information related to the land-transfer and property-assessment com- ponents of the multipurpose cadastre, which provides summary statistics on land-ownership parcels for their purposes as a user of state and, more often, local land records. One such activity is the Taxable Property Values Survey, completed for each quinquennial Census of Governments by the Census Bu- reau. Since the survey is the only one of its kind, producing results widely used by state and local officials and the general public, a summary of perti- nent aspects follows. Beginning in 1957, and in each year ending in 2 or 7 as directed in Title 13 of the U.S. Code, the Bureau of the Census has sampled two listings of real property parcels contained in local public records, as the basis for publishing statistics on property values, assessment levels, and property taxation. Bureau enumerators actually visit local recording and assessing offices in approxi- mately 2000 primary assessing jurisdictions (usually counties) throughout the country. From the public records of transfers (e.g., the grantor-grantee in- dex), enumerators obtain for each of 250,000 randomly selected sales of realty the parcel identification, transacting parties, and date of sale. From the public record (usually the "assessment roll") at the assessor's office, enumera- tors obtain the assessed value for each of the above sales and for sales in large places the tax bill as well. Then they separately enumerate, from the same roll, and other records if necessary, a sample of approximately 1.5 million realty parcel assessed values, together with parcel identifying and actual use data. Subsequently, questionnaires to parties (usually buyers) involved in the above sales produce data for 120,000 measurable sales. A separate mail can- vass of the state officials involved produces benchmark aggregates for each assessing jurisdiction. Published findings include de facto assessment levels (assessment-sale price ratios), dispersion coefficients, and effective tax rates for local assessing juris- dictions nationwide, estimated distributions of assessed values and numbers of parcels among seven realty-use categories for the entire country and for each state and its metropolitan portion, and similar assessed-value distribu- tions for many local jurisdictions. As a natural survey consequence, the Bureau of the Census has acquired a familiarity with local recording and assessing personnel, records, and proce- dures nationwide that is unique. Survey data constitute the only nationally consistent summations of values and parcels and of indicators of assessment uniformity and property-tax burdens. Cooperating with the Bureau are thou- sands of state and local recorders, assessors, tax collectors, and data processors involved in the mapping, valuation, transfer, and taxation of realty. Thus, the survey is validly regarded as a unique institutional resource, not only for sub- stantive data but also for user familiarity with local environments replete with variation (Bureau of Census, 1978;Behrens, 1980b).
32 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE The Bureau of the Census has also been a leader in the development of im- proved techniques of geographic referencing for the collection, organization, and processing of data from the Census of Population and Housing. This in- cludes design and development of the Geographic Base File (GBF) using the Dual Independent Map Encoding (DIME) approach, providing file coverage of the urban cores of most Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas of the United States. The framework of the GBF/DIME system is attractive in its uniform format over a large percentage of the population distribution. DIME has two components, one with standard geographic elements (e.g., street address), the other with locally supplied data elements (e.g., crime statistics, public-health data). Use of DIME makes it possible to match records in two files via street address or to process incoming data by means of geocoding. To the extent that DIME affects geographic identification of street address, it makes possi- ble tabulation of data related to parcels so identified (Silver, 1978). Specific related efforts to apply DIME capability to individual parcels were under- taken in the city of Omaha, Nebraska (Kinzy, 1979). DIME'S basic frame of reference is a block face or enclosed area (e.g., area enclosed by four streets). 2.5 STATUS AT THE STATE LEVEL 2.5.1 Geodetic Reference Network Responsibility for the coordination of geodetic control activity at the state level varies from effectively no organization or coordination in some states to the existence in other states of strong state geodetic survey agencies. In many states, leadership resides within the state Department of Transportation, Divi- sion of Surveying and Mapping (or equivalent). In 17 states, there is the Of- fice of State Surveyor (or equivalent), which has been established by state statute to coordinate surveying activity. In February 1979, the American Association of State Surveyors was organized to provide for formal inter- action among the state surveyors; by March 1980, 11 of the 17 state survey- ors had affiliated with this organization (Myers, 1980). Technical support and cooperation from the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) is available to the state surveying organizations in their geodetic con- trol extension and densification programs. This support particularly aids the state-level organizations in their use of proper geodetic control survey tech- niques. Historically NGS has entered into cooperative agreements with gov- ernment agencies without regard to type of agency or level of government. Agreements with state Departments of Transportation in Georgia and Con- necticut are recent examples in which NGS provided manpower on a reimburs-
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 33 able basis to survey first- and/or second-order control networks and instructed the state surveyors to provide further densification. In an agreement with the Maine Department of Transportation, NGS provided only a skeleton field party, which was supplemented by state personnel to simultaneously survey first- and second-order networks. The trend in cooperative agreements is toward only providing general ad- visory services or specific inspection or instruction services. New York, Geor- gia, Louisiana, Arizona, and South Carolina currently have resident state geo- detic advisors provided by the NGS on a cost-sharing basis. Several other states have agreements for reimbursable advisory services on an as-needed basis. 2.5.2 Base Maps There are at least 12 states that are actively involved in establishing statewide property maps: Alabama, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont. The programs in each of these states provide a wide variety of assistance to local jurisdictions, from funding of aerial photography for map- ping projects to complete statewide property-ownership mapping programs. State involvement has encouraged the applications of modern technology into the mapping process, particularly in the areas of automated (computerized) mapping and map maintenance. Some of these attempts at automation, how- ever, have not been entirely successful or cost effective. Often inadequate attention is given to the maintenance of mapping systems once the initial front-end costs have been absorbed. While National Map Accuracy Standards exist for map production, there currently are no national standards for map maintenance. 2.5.3 Cadastral Overlays Several states, most notably North Carolina, Oregon, and Massachusetts, have made significant progress in their efforts to prepare enabling legislation and to modernize their land-records information systems. In 1976, then President- Elect Ellsworth Stanley of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM) wrote a letter to each of the 50 state governors identifying the rec- ommendations from the Symposium on User Requirements for Land Records and Resource Information, held in Orono, Maine, in August 1976. Stanley urged each governor to seek the accountability from the public agencies in their state for their expenditures for land-based information and for the qual- ity of the results. He also suggested that ACSM could work with any of the states toward their development of land-based information systems. Seven substantive responses were received from Florida, Massachusetts, Missouri,
34 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE Montana, New York, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Many of the remaining 27 replies were cordial acknowledgments of the receipt of the information. This apparent lack of concern at the state level indicates one of the major problems in the development of a multipurpose cadastre. A principal concern at the state level should be the coordination of land- information improvement efforts in the areas of land transfer, property assessment, and land management. Few states are combining or coordinating the activities of land-transfer and property-assessment improvement programs. No state has attempted to coordinate all three of the major components (ref- erence frame, base maps, and cadastral overlays) of a multipurpose cadastre. Leadership exists at the state level for the improvement of boundary sur- veys in the organizations of the Professional Land Surveyors. Through the ini- tiative of ACSM, these groups have banded together to voice opposition, at the national level, to legislation that has not been in the best interests of land surveyors. Under the leadership of their state land-surveyor societies, several states have written legislation establishing statewide surveying standards. These standards specify minimum levels of accuracy for various types of sur- veys and dictate requirements for tying surveys into the State Plane Coordi- nate System. This legislation may serve as a model for enabling legislation necessary in the evolution of a modernized land-data system. The state orga- nizations of land surveyors could provide the necessary support for such legislation. 2.5.4 Improvement Implementation at the Provincial and State Level Three representative examples of improvement activities are described. They reflect a concern for the development of provincial and state-level land- information systems based on cadastral parcels. 2.5.4.1 Maritime Land Registration and Information Service The Maritime Provinces of Canada encompass an area of approximately 52,000 square miles with over 1.6 million population and an estimated 800,000 legal parcels of land (Roberts, 1980). The first step in the long pro- cess of cadastre modernization in the Maritime Provinces was the statement of need in 1944 by the New Brunswick Forest Products Association to the New Brunswick Committee on Post-War Reconstruction for "the organized and supervised survey of property boundaries with adequate monuments so that boundaries can be renewed without dispute ... for up-to-date accurate property maps for municipal taxation purposes. Control surveys are necessary as a framework for making line maps, and the survey of municipal and prop-
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 35 erty boundaries can be combined with control surveys and used for this pur- pose." The development of electronic distance-measurement instrumentation in the mid-1950's allowed for the economical beginning of such a densified control system. In 1958, the New Brunswick Coordinate Survey Program was formally organized within the provincial Department of Land and Mines; and in 1967, a provincial Surveys Act was passed, legally defining a control coordi- nate system and providing for its continued maintenance. In 1968, the Cana- dian federal government committed $4 million to the Atlantic Provinces to underwrite a two-year effort for a control-surveys, base-mapping, and land- registration program, followed by another $5 million in 1970. In 1971, the provincial governments of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island agreed to establish the Council of Maritime Premiers, through which they could provide a formal framework for promoting unity of purpose, for improving intergovernmental communications, and for implementing joint programs. An early area of interest for the new Council was the matter of land use and land ownership. In 1973, the staff previously employed in sur- vey programs by the provinces formed the nucleus of a new regional organiza- tion, the Land Registration and Information Service. The Council of Maritime Premiers succeeded in gaining strong support from the federal government through the Department of Regional Economic Expansion, which provided funding for 75 percent of the program cost through mid-1979. The Land Registration and Information Service program consists of four component phases: Phase I. Extension and densification of a second-order control survey sys- tem based on the primary geodetic survey network provided by the Federal Department of Energy, Mines and Resources. The primary network consists of 396 monuments at an average spacing of 30 km. It is intended that all properties and land-related information be integrated with this system. Den- sity of monumentation depends on land value and the extent to which the transportation systems in the country have been developed. As a general guide, monument spacing (both horizontal and vertical control) in urban areas is 400 m, in suburban areas is 750 m, and in rural areas is 4 km, or each 1 km along highways. The final secondary network contains nearly 41,000 monumented stations, with coordinates and their associated confidence infor- mation available. Over 12,000 new monuments have been placed by this program. Phase II. Production of a uniform series of resource, urban, and property maps with scales varying from 1:1000, 1:2500 and 1:5000 for urban line maps with contour intervals of 1 m and 2 m to 1:10,000 for resource ortho- photo maps with a 5-m contour interval. Property maps are compiled on the resource map series in rural/forested areas and on the urban series, where the
36 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE parcel density is higher. Nearly 5000 resource and urban maps have been pro- duced since 1973, more than doubling the map base available. As of April 1979, 64 percent of the resource mapping, 77 percent of the urban mapping, and 39 percent of the property mapping had been completed. Phase HI. Implementation of an improved system of land-title registration utilizing modern technology for storing, retrieving, and processing land regis- try data. Reference of a parcel to the control reference system (Phase I), us- ing current ownership maps (Phase II), supports development of a computer- based land-title system which will be progressively updated from the present grantor-grantee indexing to a parcel index system and then to a land-title sys- tem fashioned on the Torrens principles of title registration (Bureau of Cen- sus, 1974). All title information will be stored on computer files and be im- mediately accessible from any land registration office within the Maritimes. The cost of producing only the land-parcel computer file and associated prop- erty maps was estimated in 1978 at $23.60 per parcel. Phase IV. Establishment of a computerized land data bank, integrating in- formation on land use, resource, geology, soil, and other factors with the ownership data, thus developing the multipurpose cadastre records. In addition to the $9 million funding of the Atlantic Provinces Surveying and Mapping Program in 1968 and 1970, costs since 1973 are estimated at $27 million, shared principally by 75 percent Canadian federal funding and 25 percent through the Council of Maritime Premiers (McLaughlin and Clapp, 1977 ;OgUvie, 1977). 2.5.4.2 North Carolina Land-R ecords-Managemen t Program The North Carolina General Assembly enacted legislation in 1977 creating a state land-records-management program to provide assistance to counties de- siring to improve their land-records system. This legislation provided for the implementation of a system of land-parcel identifier numbers and established a program to provide financial assistance to counties for the modernization of their land-records system and for the preparation of new base maps and property maps. The three bills passed by the General Assembly were the cul- mination of effort at the state level that began in 1974 when the North Caro- lina Bar Association created a special committee to study land records. Funds were raised through donations, and the Institute of Government of the Uni- versity of North Carolina was retained to conduct the study. The report of the study recognized that (1) there was little uniformity among the state's 100 counties in the handling of land records; (2) the current system was in- sufficient to meet current and future demands;(3) the costs to the individual counties to improve their systems would be great, and 100 separate and in- compatible systems might develop if a statewide study was not conducted to
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 37 induce uniformity; (4) only five counties had high-quality mapping systems, and 32 counties had no mapping systems; and (5) the recording of maps was not uniform. In 1975, the study group unanimously recommended that a legislative study commission be created, resulting in the Legislative Research Commission of the General Assembly forming the Committee on Land Rec- ords Information Systems, made up of both legislators and public members. The General Assembly appropriated $150,000 in 1975 to the State Depart- ment of Administration for the purpose of research and development of a modernized land-records-information system. The General Assembly appor- tioned $125,000 of the funds in support of a pilot county project in Forsyth County (Winston-Salem area, 419 square miles, 140,000 parcels) (Ayers, 1980); the remaining $25,000 supported the Legislative Research Commis- sion Study. Forsyth County has received another grant of $210,000 ($10,000 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and $200,000 from the Appalachian Regional Commission) (Ayers, 1980). The Forsyth County Land Records Information System had been concep- tualized in the late 1960's by Register of Deeds Eunice Ayers, with active de- velopment beginning in 1974. The system has had as its goal the centraliza- tion of records and maps that have historically been kept by eight different departments in three separate buildings. The system features an automated parcel indexing system, automated grantor-grantee indexing system, parcel- level base maps, standard recording forms, rapid instrument processing, and micrographics storage and retrieval. The system is being implemented on a Burroughs 6800 computer, with both the City of Winston-Salem and the pub- lic school system also sharing in its use. Title-related data are on-line and accessible in the Register of Deeds office and the Tax Supervisors (assessors) office. A 30-year chain of title has been captured, and as deeds are recorded the new ownership and deed book and page are added to the system via on- line terminals. Tax records for each parcel are also accessible on-line by owner's name or tax block and lot. Eventually parcel identifiers and property address indexes will be added. Since 1974, nearly $3 million has been budgeted for the software develop- ment, data conversion, and digitizing of the property parcels. This figure does not include expense for editing, monumentation, and ground control. Property maps are being prepared on orthophoto base maps using photog- raphy flown in 1974 and referenced to geodetic control of the National Geo- detic Survey and the North Carolina Geodetic Survey. The property maps have been digitized, and an interactive graphics system has been purchased to support the need for updated graphic products (Ayers, 1978; Jones, 1978; Forsyth County Land Records, 1975-1976). A critical impetus in the favorable reception that land-records improve- ment legislation received in North Carolina was the requirement for property
38 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE revaluation every eight years and the concern at the local political level for equitable property assessment, given the widespread lack of good property maps. With the passage of legislation in 1977, the North Carolina Department of Administration's Land Records Management Program distributed docu- mentation to assist individual counties in preparing a long-range plan for county land records, including regulations governing State Grants for Improve- ment of Land Records. Also distributed were documentation for Model Spe- cifications for County Base Maps, Model Specifications for Cadastral Maps, and Practical Aspects of the Uniform Parcel Identifier. Base mapping scales used are 1:1200 in urban, 1:2400 in suburban, and 1:4800 in rural areas. The 14-digjt land-parcel identifier specified for use is based on the North Carolina State Plane Coordinate System. The State General Assembly has appropriated $75,000 each of the last three years for distribution as grants to counties for the improvement of their land records. Thus far, 15 of the 100 counties in North Carolina have bene- fited from the program (Campbell, 1975; De Ramus, 1978; North Carolina Department of Administration, 1978). Also established in North Carolina as a result of the State Land Policy Act of 1974 was the Land Resources Information Service to support the planning activities at all levels of state government. A minicomputer interactive graphics system has been operational since 1977 digitizing available orthophoto and topographic map products geographically based on the North Carolina State Plane Coordinate System. A common working scale is 1:24,000 though both smaller and larger scales are used for various requirements. 2.5.4.3 Oregon Department of Revenue Standard Cadastral Map Program In order to achieve equalization and uniformity in ad valorem taxation, in 1951 the Oregon State Legislature approved a statewide reappraisal program. It was immediately found that the real property inventory in most counties was incomplete and that the cadastral maps were inadequate for appraisal purposes. Furthermore, there was no uniformity between county map sys- tems. Tax administrators realized that equalization could not be achieved by reappraisal alone; map standards had to be developed and employed in a mas- sive statewide reappraisal program. In 1952, the Legislature authorized the State Tax Commission to install and assist in the preparation and mainte- nance of map standards, cadastral maps, and standard record systems in the offices of the assessors, also providing for the sharing of expenses of the map and records projects. Thus began a cadastral map program, which has now evolved into the Computer-Assisted Mapping System, developed and operated by the Urban-Rural Mapping Unit of the Assessment and Appraisal Division of the Oregon Department of Revenue. The responsibility of the Urban-Rural
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 39 Mapping Unit is to (1) develop and maintain Oregon State cadastral map standards; (2) prepare and install standard cadastral map and record systems in the offices of the county assessors, on a 50-50 cost-share basis; (3) make status studies of county cadastral map systems and recommend procedures for correcting system deficiencies; (4) assist county assessors and cartog- raphers with technical map and ownership problems; (5) train county cartog- raphers, appraisers, and other assessment officials in the preparation, mainte- nance, and use of cadastral maps; (6) maintain tax code maps; (7) make soil- type maps; and (8) maintain cadastral map and record systems in 13 counties where workloads are insufficient to require a full-time cartographer. These responsibilities are carried out by a work force of 18 cartographers and one clerical assistant under the direction of a manager and an assistant manager. Base-mapping scales used range from 1:1200 for urban areas to 1:24,000 for resources mapping. Geographic referencing for all maps is the Oregon State Plane Coordinate System. Two counties in Oregon have, or are in the process of developing, advanced systems. These are Lane County, including Eugene, and Marion County, in- cluding Salem (Mead, 1977;Penfold, 1978). 2.6 STATUS AT THE LOCAL AND PRIVATE LEVELS 2.6.1 Geodetic Reference Network At the regional, county, and local levels, geodetic control activity is carried out most commonly by private surveyors and engineers in response to the needs of specific projects and long-range objectives of regional and municipal control densification. As at the state level, technical support and cooperation from the National Geodetic Survey is available to support regional and local control densification. Recent cooperative agreements have been designed for Jefferson County, Colorado; Portage County, Ohio; King County, Washing- ton; Ada County, Idaho; Ingham County, Michigan; three counties in both Florida and New York; and the Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas. 2.6.2 Base Maps and Cadastral Overlays Most states and many local governments have active mapping and land-record programs that could be incorporated into a multipurpose cadastre. Generally, these efforts are undertaken to solve mainly local problems without consider- ing the need for compatibility with systems in adjoining jurisdictions or at the
40 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE state and federal levels. State mapping efforts are usually undertaken in co- operation with the USGS, but the very-large-scale maps are accomplished under contract to private surveying and mapping companies. Cadastral over- lays prepared in local offices range from being complete and up to date to being barely usable. One of the major functions of each of the Offices of Land Information Systems, proposed for local and state governments elsewhere in this report, will be to examine the status of base maps and cadastral overlays within its jurisdiction, determining items of commonality and building on these a com- patible network of multipurpose cadastres. 2.6.3 Improvement Implementation at the Local and Private Level There are many improvement activities at the local level within county juris- dictions. Notable examples are in Forsyth County, North Carolina; Lane County, Oregon; Fairfax County, Virginia; Racine County, Wisconsin; Henne- pin County, Minnesota; Nassau County, New York; and the City of Houston, Texas. Significant cooperative efforts are also being carried out at the local level in Memphis, Tennessee, under the Computer-Assisted Mapping and Rec- ord Activities Systems Project and in Southeastern Pennsylvania under the Regional Mapping and Land Records Program. Several local governments have minicomputer-based interactive graphics systems implementing automated mapping. Among the earliest such installa- tions was that of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee, in 1974 for the creation and maintenance of a comprehensive planimetric digital data base for all 700 square miles of Davidson County. The data base includes topographic data, parcel boundaries, and utility inventory, all correlated to the State Plane Coordinate system. The data base was developed over a one-year period from a 1:2400 map series, with 2800 individual one-quarter-square-mile map seg- ments. Other interactive graphics systems have been implemented in Santa Rosa, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Virginia Beach, Virginia; and Chicago, Illi- nois (Kevany, 1979). In the private sector, numerous title insurance and utility companies are the proponents of land-information-systems improvement. 2.6.3.1 Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Mapping and Land Records Program The Regional Mapping and Land Records (RMLR) program is an example of a cooperative effort between private and public utilities and local government.
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 41 The participants in RMLR are the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Com- mission; the Pennsylvania counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia; Philadelphia Electric Company; Bell of Pennsylvania; Phila- delphia Gas;Philadelphia Suburban Water;Pennsylvania Power and Light; and the Philadelphia City Water and Sewer Departments. Following preliminary informal discussions beginning in 1972, RMLR was initiated in 1976. To help determine the best approach for achieving accurate base maps for common use by the participants, a 50-square-mile pilot project in Norristown, Pennsyl- vania, was defined. The $100,000 cost of the pilot project was shared by the participants, with no participant contributing more than $15,000. Geodetic control densification was carried out, in cooperation with the NGS, placing 50 new first-order stations. A private contractor was selected to perform the pilot project. Base mapping scales of 1:500 and 1:1000 in urban and 1:2000 in both suburban and rural areas were used. Products also include ortho- photography, digital planimetric mapping, digital contour overlays, and digital property mapping. Production of the digital data base is accomplished using direct stereo digitization of each stereo model. The mapping is performed at 8x magnification, producing the l:2000-scale mapping from l:16,000-scale photography and the l:500-scale mapping from l:4000-scale photography. Property boundaries are scissor drafted onto the orthophotography base and then digitized for input into the digital data base. The interactive graphics software provides great flexibility in looking at selected segments of the digi- tal data base for any specified map area (Byler, 1978). The RMLR Norristown pilot project concluded in August 1979. Based on cost data collected during that project, the City of Philadelphia conducted a detailed cost analysis that initially indicates a favorable cost-benefit ratio in land-data modernization. The City of Philadelphia has also defined its own center city project covering 25 blocks in center Philadelphia, in cooperation with the major utility companies (Hadalski, 1980). 2.6.3.2 Memphis, TennesseeâComputer Assisted Mapping and Record Activities Systems Program The Utility Location and Coordination Council of the American Public Works Association was authorized in 1976 to form a special task force on computer mapping and records systems. The task force was charged to determine an American Public Works Association-Utility Location and Coordination Coun- cil standard for computerized mapping and to prepare a problem description and definition report describing a test system for demonstration and develop- ment of procedures and standards. As a result, the American Public Works Association initiated in 1977 the Computer Assisted Mapping and Record Activities Systems (CAMRAS) program in Memphis, Tennessee, at a funding
42 NEED FOR A MULTIPURPOSE CADASTRE level of $1 million over a three-year period, supported by over 20 agencies. The stated objectives of the program are (1) to develop, promulgate, docu- ment, and implement suggested procedures, standards, and specifications for jointly funded and shared-used computer-assisted geobased local record sys- tems and (2) to assist city, county, and utility interests in initiating, develop- ing, testing, and operating a working system to provide a wide range of mea- surable and user-oriented data. Base mapping scales of 1:1200 for line maps (3200 acres) and 1:2400 for orthophoto maps (325 square miles) were se- lected, with maps of both scales being digitized (Bathke, 1978). The ultimate objective of CAMRAS is technology transfer to the sponsor- ing agencies through a series of over 25 technical reports. The first three CAMRAS documents have been released and are entitled Aerial Photography for Photogrammetric Mapping, Procurement Specifications for An Interactive Graphics System, and File Format for Data Exchange Between Graphic Data Bases. Other reports will deal, among others, with such items as vendor evalua- tion, data capture, and user guidelines and will be published as they are com- pleted (Hinkle, 1980). 2 6.3.3 Metropolitan Common Data Base, Houston, Texas The city of Houston, Texas, has introduced the Metropolitan Common Data Base (METROCOM) system, an integrated collection of spatially related mu- nicipal data (Hanigan, 1979). All data are indexed to digitized versions of planimetric base maps, which are being produced using standard photomap- ping techniques. The data-base development is being accomplished using local resources: a registered land surveyor for the ownership data base, a title com- pany for boundary research and ownership verification, a mapping firm for tax map compilation, an appraisal firm for property improvements and reval- uation, and a professional engineer for facility mapping. The geobase for METROCOM are the more than 5000 survey markers im- planted at intervals of approximately 610 m, whose coordinates have been determined from second-order, class II horizontal and vertical control surveys (Federal Geodetic Control Committee, 1980). The 1:1200-scale maps are pro- duced in planimetric and topographic series, compiled from l:6000-scale color aerial photography. All maps are compiled to the National Horizontal Map Accuracy Standards of 1/40 in. at map scale for 90 percent of well- defined points (American Congress on Surveying and Mapping and American Society of Engineers, 1972). At present, planimetric map data are entered into the data base at ten data levels: roadways, railroads, drainage, sidewalks, driveways, fences, parking lots, buildings, miscellaneous cultural detail, and annotation. In the building and maintaining of the METROCOM data base an interactive graphic mapping system is used.
Current Status of Cadastral Efforts 43 Major emphasis during the first year of the project has been on the devel- opment of the geobase from available high-quality planimetric base maps. The ready availability of these acceptable data provided Tax and Public Works De- partments with time to familiarize themselves with the digital mapping sys- tem's capabilities and limitations. At present, the nongraphic data file for creation of ownership maps is under development, and work is under way on design of the file structure for facility mapping (Hanigan, 1979). 2.7 CONCLUSIONS Although great progress in land-information systems has been made in some localities, it is apparent that without constructive action at the various levels of government, the land-record and land-information systems will become in- creasingly unmanageable. A multipurpose cadastre, compatible on a national basis, would go a long way toward resolving this situation. Input data to the cadastre will develop at all levels of governments and from private individuals and institutions. The free flow of data and information among all users re- quires a compatible system of multipurpose cadastres that will make up a na- tional network. To achieve the degree of compatability required for a workable network of multipurpose cadastres, improvements are needed in local, state, and federal organization; in surveying and recording practices; and in local, state, and fed- eral legislation. The technical problems to be resolved are discussed in Chap- ter 3; the organizational problems are considered in Chapter 4.
