Potential Benefits to Local Governments

• Assures that the best available data are used in each public transaction

• Avoids conflicts among land records of different public offices

• Improves accuracy of real-property assessments

• Provides base maps for local planning and preliminary engineering studies

• Provides a standardized data base for neighborhood, municipal, county, or regional development plans

• Avoids costs of maintaining separate map systems and land-data files

• Encourages coordination among separate map systems affecting land

• Improves public attitudes toward administration of local government programs

Potential Benefits to State Governments

• Provides accurate inventories of natural assets

• Provides accurate locational references for administration of state regulations such as pollution controls

• Accurately locates state ownership or other interests in land

• Provides a standardized database for management of public lands

• Provides large-scale base maps for siting studies

• Simplifies coordination among state and local offices

Potential Benefits to the Federal Government

• Provides a flow of standardized data for updating federal maps and statistics, e.g., for the federal censuses

• Provides a database for monitoring objects of national concern, e.g., agricultural land use and foreign ownership of U.S. real estate

• Provides a reliable record of the locations of federal ownerships or other interests in land

• Provides standardized records for managing federal assistance to local programs such as housing, community development, and historic preservation

Potential Benefits to Private Firms

• Produces accurate inventories of land parcels, available as a public record

• Produces standard, large-scale maps that can be used for planning, engineering, or routing studies

• Speeds administration of public regulations

Potential Benefits to Individuals

• Provides faster access to records affecting individual rights, especially land title

• Clarifies the boundaries of areas restricted by zoning, wetland restrictions, pollution controls, or other user controls

• Produces accurate maps that can be used for resolving private interests in the land

• Reduces costs of public utilities by replacing present duplicative base-mapping programs

• Improves efficiency of tax-supported government services as described earlier in this table

SOURCE: NRC, 1983, p. 17.