Abstract. Very High-resolution (VHR) optical satellites with a ground sampling distance (GSD) of 1m and less for nadir view began with IKONOS in 1999. There are now several VHR optical satellites. A WorldView-2 image compared the advantage of higher-resolution space images for mapping purposes with some lower-resolution VHR images. The orbit altitude of WorldView-2 (WV2) was changed from 767km to 680km in 2011, reducing the GSD in the nadir view from 0.46m to 0.41m. The WV2 image was taken at an incidence angle of 33.3°, resulting in a GSD of 0.49 m times 0.59 m, or 0.54 m on average. The information content analysis confirmed the generally required production scale of 0.05 to 0.1 mm GSD at map scale. This corresponds to a topographic map scale of 1:10,000 for 1 m and 1:5000 for 0.5 m GSD images. This is also based on test fields in İstanbul, Adalar district. The required mapping detail that could be identified using with the VHR space images is dominated by the ground resolution available as the ground sampling distance (GSD). WV2 imagery has proven to help update the GIS and cadastral database.
Georeferenced Access Points as a Strategic Node in the Evolution of Territorial Information Systems - This paper explores the strategic role of georeferenced access points and civic numbering as foundational components of advanced Territorial Information Systems (SIT) within Italian public administrations. The quality and consistency of georeferenced street and building numbers represent a fundamental component of territorial data infrastructures, enabling reliable integration between cadastral datasets, administrative services and emergency response systems.
Drawing from the experience of LdP Progetti GIS — involving more than 130 municipalities across five regions — the article demonstrates how the integration of Accesses, Buildings and Street Toponyms enables an interoperable Web-GIS ecosystem supporting digital services, data governance and operational decision-making. Real case studies from the municipalities of Siena, Arezzo, Empoli and Pistoia illustrate concrete applications such as emergency management, fiscal intelligence (TARI compliance), housing planning and economic activity monitoring. The results highlight significant improvements in administrative efficiency, transparency and open-data availability, positioning geospatial infrastructures as a key enabler of digital transformation in the Public Sector.
The Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) is leading a nationwide initiative to map and restore seagrass meadows under the Marine Ecosystem Restoration (MER) project. This effort addresses the alarming decline of Posidonia oceanica and Cymodocea nodosa habitats, which are critical for carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and coastal resilience. The MER project’s mapping component, executed by Fugro and Compagnia Generale Ripreseaeree (CGR), in partnership with EOMAP – a Fugro company, and PlanBlue, employed a multi-sensor approach, combining satellite, airborne, vessel-based (high-resolution multibeam), and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) technologies. The integration of bathymetric LiDAR, multibeam, optical and multispectral data allowed continuous bathymetric coverage from the coastline to 50 metre depth. The Virgeo® platform, specifically developed by Fugro, facilitated real-time monitoring of acquisitions and data collected by ships and aircraft engaged in the surveys. This integrated approach provided a robust baseline for restoration planning and long-term monitoring, offering a scalable, cost-effective solution for national marine habitat assessments. The Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR) MER project was funded by MASE, coordinated by ISPRA and scientifically supported by Italian research institutes and universities (CNR-IGAG, IIM, Sapienza, INGV, PoliMi, UniPd, UniGe).
Israel Nunes da Silva, Gabriel Dietzsch, Elcio Hideiti Shiguemori
Typically, the modernization of Land Administration Systems (LAS) concentrates on overarching aspects and seldom investigates the spatial infrastructure that underpins it, thereby presenting challenges for the integration of geospatial data. For this purpose, Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS), characterized by its "congruent cartography", offer a promising solution within a multi-scale reference framework. Moreover, a significant gap exists in the absence of a DGGS designed to address the cartographic focus and usability requirements for land administration, such as equal-area sizing and geodetic precision. Developed at the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA), the ITA Cadastral Ellipsoidal Reference Tessellation (ITACaRT) was introduced as an innovative DGGS to bridge this gap. The development of ITACaRT was guided by several key criteria, including its suitability for cadastral purposes at appropriate scales, compatibility with the WGS84 ellipsoid and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), utilization of simple parallelogram-shaped equal-area cells, a direct tessellation adhering to Cartesian geometry for usability by geoinformation professionals, and decimal convergence to facilitate blockchain tokenization. Complementary to these criteria, a Compositional Hierarchical Indexing system was devised to represent cadastral vector features more efficiently than the atomic identifiers typical of conventional DGGS. ITACaRT thus establishes a solid foundation for contemporary LAS, providing a viable spatial infrastructure that supports emerging technologies such as blockchain.
Israel Oluwaseun Taiwo, Olomolatan Matthew Ibitoye, Sunday Olukayode Oladejo
Towards achieving Fit-for-Purpose (FFP) cadastral mapping, this study compares conventional cadastral mapping methods of theodolite traverse, total station and Real Time Kinematic Global Navigation Satellite System (RTK GNSS) with high-resolution aerial imagery in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Evaluating time, cost, accuracy, and coverage, it finds that high-resolution aerial imagery can achieve results comparable to conventional instruments with wider coverage, thereby expediting land registration and fostering sustainable development. However, challenges in obtaining high-resolution imagery necessitate regulatory reform for UAV use. The study recommends adoption of innovative solutions to improve the spatial, legal, and institutional frameworks in the state and enhance land governance.
Israel Oluwaseun Taiwo, M. Ibitoye, Sunday Olukayode Oladejo
et al.
In developing nations, such as Ekiti State, Nigeria, the utilization of remotely sensed data, particularly satellite and UAV imagery, remains significantly underexploited in land administration. This limits multi-resolution imagery’s potential in land governance and socio-economic development. This study examines factors influencing UAV adoption for land administration in Nigeria, mapping seven rural, peri-urban, and urban sites with orthomosaics (2.2 cm to 3.39 cm resolution). Boundaries were manually delineated, and parcel areas were calculated. Using the 0.05 m orthomosaic as a reference, the Horizontal Radial Root Mean Square Error (RMSEr) and Normalized Parcel Area Error (NPAE) were computed. Results showed a consistent increase in error with increasing resolution (0.1 m to 1 m), with RMSEr ranging from 0.053 m (formal peri-urban) to 2.572 m (informal rural settlement). Formal settlements with physical demarcations exhibited more consistent values. A comparison with GNSS data revealed that RMSEr values conformed to the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) Class II and III standards. The research demonstrates physical demarcations’ role in facilitating cadastral mapping, with formal settlements showing the highest suitability. This study recommends context-specific imagery resolution to enhance land governance. Key implications include promoting settlement typology awareness and addressing UAV regulatory challenges. NPAE values can serve as a metric for assessing imagery resolution fitness for cadastral mapping.
LiDAR technology has emerged as a superior tool for largescale mapping, particularly in cadastral surveying. By using laser pulses to measure distances, LiDAR creates highly accurate 3D representations of the Earth’s surface, surpassing traditional methods in terms of speed and efficiency. This study investigated LiDAR’s effectiveness in rural cadastral mapping, addressing the limitations of traditional techniques like total stations and GNSS. Using FARO TLS and Leica RTK-GPS, researchers collected dense point cloud data and processed it using FARO Scene and Cloud Compare software. LiDAR demonstrated exceptional accuracy, achieving a mean square error of $\pm 0.047 \mathrm{~m}$, well within the acceptable limit for cadastral applications. Additionally, it significantly improved operational efficiency, reducing survey time and personnel requirements by approximately five times. These results highlight LiDAR’s potential to revolutionize cadastral mapping and enhance land administration in rural areas.
Abstract. Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are increasingly used in different applications, including 3D urban modelling, cadastral mapping, urban planning, GIS information system and other fields because of their advantages. As a consequence, UAS equipment is constantly developed to provide more accurate results in a more reliable mode. This paper aims to evaluate the performances of a low-cost UAS system, namely DJI Phantom 4 Pro v2 equipped with a TeoKIT GNSS PPK (post-processing kinematic) module for cadastral mapping purposes. Two fights (oblique and nadir) over a residential area at 60 m height were performed and some 100 ground points were used to derive RMSE accuracies. Comparison between GNSS-aided with PPK processing and indirect georeferencing processes are performed. Given a mobile laser scanner (MLS) point cloud as ground truth, comparison with UAS point clouds and manually digitized features are also performed and reported.
The technique of surveying cultural heritage, like this as in general the topographical one linked to the ground, it profoundly changed between the end of twentieth century and the emergence of the new millennium.
Everything has changed, from the measuring instruments to the means of calculation, both by now indissolubly related to electronics and information technology.
The present author had the fortune of live all the corresponding transformations either from the operational side as well as from the cultural and research, as a university professor of disciplines geomatics, or topography, photogrammetry and cartography. The latest news, in order of time, is the strong transformation of photogrammetry, which as an auxiliary means for production cartographic as it was born, about a century and half ago, it has now become a multifaceted technique indispensable both in land surveying and cultural heritage.
The main challenge in the renewal and updating of the Cadastre of Real Estate of the Czech Republic is to achieve maximum efficiency but to retain the required accuracy of all points in the register. The paper discusses the possibility of using UAV photogrammetry and laser scanning for cadastral mapping in the Czech Republic. Point clouds from images and laser scans together with orthoimages were derived over twelve test areas. Control and check points were measured using geodetic methods (RTK-GNSS and total stations). The accuracy of the detailed survey based on UAV technologies was checked on hundreds of points, mainly building corners and fence foundations. The results show that the required accuracy of 0.14 m was achieved on more than 80% and 98% of points in the case of the image point clouds and orthoimages and the case of the LiDAR point cloud, respectively. Nevertheless, the methods lack completeness of the performed survey that must be supplied by geodetic measurements. The paper also provides a comparison of the costs connected to traditional and UAV-based cadastral mapping, and it addresses the necessary changes in the organisational and technological processes in order to utilise the UAV based technologies.
Mark Brookman-Amissah., S. Mantey, B. Kumi-Boateng
et al.
This paper proposes a generic workflow for using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to produce acceptable cadastral plans in Ghana. This was done by firstly verifying in the field UAV restricted zones specified by the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) and subsequently analyzing ground and aerial survey data from two sites within the Tema Municipality. The data analyzed consisted of one set of boundary coordinate data of the sites obtained from a static Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) survey and another set from on-screen digitization of site boundaries from aerials obtained from a Mavic Air UAV weighing 430 g with a camera resolution of 12 megapixels flying at altitudes of 40 and 60 m. A comparison of the two sets of boundary coordinates data showed differences under the limit of +/-3 ft specified by the Survey and Mapping Division (SMD) of the Lands Commission of Ghana. The paper thus outlines a generic workflow as follows: (1) Determining if selected site is within a flight restricted zone (2) Undertaking field reconnaissance to determine appropriate flight parameters and ground control point locations (3) Processing UAV imagery to obtain orthomosaics (4) Performing on-screen digitizing of site boundaries from orthomosaics and (5) Obtaining accurate boundary turning point coordinates from digitized boundary. The paper concludes that this approach if accepted may be used in obtaining multiple cadastral plans within built up areas from a single UAV flight and recommends that UAV and ground control data be submitted in Geotiff and Rinex formats respectively to facilitate checks by the Examinations Unit of the SMD.
During the past years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) gained importance as a tool to quickly collect high-resolution imagery as base data for cadastral mapping. However, the fact that UAV-derived geospatial information supports decision-making processes involving people’s land rights ultimately raises questions about data quality and accuracy. In this vein, this paper investigates different flight configurations to give guidance for efficient and reliable UAV data acquisition. Imagery from six study areas across Europe and Africa provide the basis for an integrated quality assessment including three main aspects: (1) the impact of land cover on the number of tie-points as an indication on how well bundle block adjustment can be performed, (2) the impact of the number of ground control points (GCPs) on the final geometric accuracy, and (3) the impact of different flight plans on the extractability of cadastral features. The results suggest that scene context, flight configuration, and GCP setup significantly impact the final data quality and subsequent automatic delineation of visual cadastral boundaries. Moreover, even though the root mean square error of checkpoint residuals as a commonly accepted error measure is within a range of few centimeters in all datasets, this study reveals large discrepancies of the accuracy and the completeness of automatically detected cadastral features for orthophotos generated from different flight plans. With its unique combination of methods and integration of various study sites, the results and recommendations presented in this paper can help land professionals and bottom-up initiatives alike to optimize existing and future UAV data collection workflows.
José Carpio-Pinedo, Manuel Benito-Moreno, Patxi J. Lamíquiz-Daudén
Land use mix is one of the cornerstones for urban sustainability, in opposition to functional segregation and zoning policies. Land use mix is a prerequisite for urban proximity dynamics, healthier lifestyles and public space vitality. However, methodological shortcomings to its measurement remain and are responsible for the unexpected weak association with pedestrian activity. This study puts forward a novel method to reframe, measure and map land use mix as ‘walkable trips’, a closer approach to its benefits based on functional and spatial complementarity. The method draws on newly available cadastral microdata at the parcel-level that, combined with trip generation rates and network analysis tools, enable a detailed assessment and mapping of potential for walkable trips, as well as a proxy to the spatial patterns of urban vitality, in line with the principle of the 15-minute city. The method is applied to the case of the Madrid metropolitan area.
In order to transcend the challenge of accelerating the establishment of cadastres and to efficiently maintain them once established, innovative, and automated cadastral mapping techniques are needed. The focus of the research is on the use of high-resolution optical sensors on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms. More specifically, this study investigates the potential of UAV-based cadastral mapping, where the ENVI feature extraction (FX) module has been used for data processing. The paper describes the workflow, which encompasses image pre-processing, automatic extraction of visible boundaries on the UAV imagery, and data post-processing. It shows that this approach should be applied when the UAV orthoimage is resampled to a larger ground sample distance (GSD). In addition, the findings show that it is important to filter the extracted boundary maps to improve the results. The results of the accuracy assessment showed that almost 80% of the extracted visible boundaries were correct. Based on the automatic extraction method, the proposed workflow has the potential to accelerate and facilitate the creation of cadastral maps, especially for developing countries. In developed countries, the extracted visible boundaries might be used for the revision of existing cadastral maps. However, in both cases, the extracted visible boundaries must be validated by landowners and other beneficiaries.