Technical Cadasters

A technical cadaster is a data registration system that identifies or characterizes an area of interest, the registration of which should be executed or presented descriptively and always supported by a well-defined cartographic basis.

The cadaster must also meet informative and legal requirements of both urban and rural properties, as well as perform the function of a database for governmental agencies, work agencies and users that need accurate information about a production unit or a region.

The cadaster can be set up for tax purposes (real estate assessment and equitative taxation), legal purposes (transfer of title deeds), as basis for land management and use (planning and other administrative purposes) and for sustainable development and environmental protection.

Over the last decades cadastration has become a fundamental tool for regional and urban planning activities and to organize the territory, as well as to control the use of properties in compliance with laws that regulate land use.

The technical cadaster can provide a range of information, among which are the following:

• Geographic location of the property
• Title status of the property
• Dwellers and squatters and their importance in terms of local production
• Areas of tension (litigation ), public land or land in abeyance
• Regional property structure
• Property limits, providing individual plans for each property for legal cadastration purposes
• Basis for property legalization
• Drainage network definition and microbasin delimitation
• Survey subsidies to set up engineering projects
• Rural Territorial Tax and Building and Territorial Urban Tax adjustment

In developed countries, the technical cadaster is considered the basic tool to carry out strict and detailed analyses that are integrated to the cities’ physical and environmental characteristics over time. It is also an important planning and land management tool that should be in place for the municipality to systemize the control, assessment and charging of the taxes that it should collect.

When the technical cadaster plays the role of a basic records system for a wide range of individuals and organizations that are responsible for carrying out different services, it is called multifunctional.

A technical cadaster can serve a specific purpose, and in that case it will be given specific names: legal cadaster, fiscal cadaster, real estate cadaster, infrastructure cadaster, site cadaster, etc. Those cadasters are also called by some authors as “sectorial” or “thematic” cadasters.