Article of the Month in 2011

FIG publishes each month the Article of the Month. This is a high-level paper focusing on interesting topic to all surveyors. This article can be picked up from an FIG conference or another event or it can be a paper written directly for this purpose.

• December 2011 - Robin McLaren, Scotland, UK: Crowdsourcing Support of Land Administration – A Partnership Approach. In this visionary paper Robin McLaren is exploring one potential solution to the security of tenure gap through establishing a partnership between land professionals and citizens that would encourage and support citizens to directly capture and maintain information about their land rights. It was presented at the annual FIG-Commission 7 meeting last October in Innsbruck (Austria) and is the result of a common research work executed by Robin McLaren and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
   
• November 2011 - Damdinsuren Amarsaikhan, Mongolia: Advanced Applications of Optical, Microwave and Hyperspectral RS in Mongolia. In 4 different case studies the capabilities of these techniques and the usage nowadays in Mongolia are demonstrated. This paper was presented at the FIG Commission 5 and 6 workshop in September 2011 in Ulaan-Baatar. The author, Prof. Damdinsuren Amarsaikhan is Head of the Geoinformatics Laboratory at the Institute of Informatics and Remote Sensing, Mongolian Academy of Sciences and Professor at the National University of Mongolia.
   
• October 2011 - Alexander Sagaydak and Anna Lukyanchikova, Russian Federation: Development of Agricultural Land Market in the Russian Federation. The development of Agricultural Land Market is unique in Russia compared to other countries. The authors have developed a new method for calculating the value of agricultural land because the banks have not accepted the cadastral value as a basis for agricultural land mortgages. This value was calculated on the basis of the land market auction price model of a certain region. This paper was presented at the FIG Working Week in Marrakech May 2011.
   

• September 2011 - Graeme Blick, Chris Crook, Nic Donnelly and John Beavan, New Zealand: The Impact of the 2010 Darfield (Canterbury) Earthquake on the Geodetic Infrastructure in New Zealand. The article is reporting on the dramatic impact of the 2010 (Canterbury) Earthquake on the Geodetic Infrastructure in New Zealand. Before the earth quakes happened there was already a fully implemented geodetic Infrastructure in place. On one hand over 1 million geodetic and cadastral marks are affected within 60 km of the earthquakes epicenter where significant ground movements occurred. On the other hand these marks can be used for a detailed and long-term deformation analysis. This article does also underline the need and importance of our profession to the society.
   

• August 2011 - Frances Plimmer and William J McCluskey, United Kingdom: Sustainability and Property Taxation. Property Taxation is one of the key topics on the agenda of FIG-Commission 9 for the next years. The authors are discussing sustainability in the context of property taxation. They consider that sustainability in property taxation should be considered from three perspectives – the sustainability of the tax object (land and buildings), the sustainability of the tax system itself and the sustainability of the uses to which the yield from property taxation are put. This paper was successfully peer reviewed and presented at the FIG Working Week in Marrakech May 2011.
   
• July 2011 - Kate Fairlie, Mark Whitty, Mitchell Leach, Fadhillah Norzahari, Adrian White, Stephen Cossell, Jose Guivant and Jayantha Katupitiya, Australia: Spatially Smart Wine – Testing Geospatial Technologies for Sustainable Wine Production. Among the authors from our paper of the month July 2010 are 5 part of the Sydney Young Surveyors group. Kate Fairlie is at the same time also Chair of the FIG Young surveyors network. “Spatially Smart Wine” was a project initiated by an enthusiastic group of Sydney Young Surveyors, with the support of the Institute of Surveyors New South Wales and the School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems and the University of New South Wales. In this research geospatial technologies are evaluated for precision viticulture, supporting organic and biodynamic principles. The vineyard application is demonstrated of a teleoperated vehicle with three dimensional laser mapping and GNSS localisation to achieve centimetre-level feature position estimation.
   
• June 2011 - Rohan Bennett, Abbas Rajabifard, Mohsen Kalantari, Jude Wallace and Ian Williamson, Australia: Cadastral Futures: Building a New Vision for the Nature and Role of Cadastres.This paper has been selected to the article of the month because of it is the background paper for the special session on Cadastre 2034 at the FIG Working Week in Marrakech in May 2011. This paper was originally presented at the FIG Congress in Sydney in 2010. It was also a starting point for the special issue of GIM International on future cadastres. Handouts of this presentation. You can download the special issue of GIM International from the here. It includes an interview with Hernando De Soto and the series of articles Beyond Cadastre 2034.
   
• May 2011 - Peter van Oosterom, Jantien Stoter, Hendrik Ploeger, The Netherlands, Rod Thompson and Sudarshan Karki, Australia: World-wide Inventory of the Status of 3D-Cadastres in 2010 and Expectations for 2014. This paper has been selected to the article of the month because of the increased interest on 3D-cadastre. The paper has been presented at a session on 3D-cadastres at the FIG Working Week in Marrakech in May 2011.
   
• April 2011 - Tarja Myllymäki and Tarja Pykälä, Finland: The Challenge to Implement International Cadastral Models - Case Finland. This paper has been presented at the FIG Congress in Sydney, April 2010, and has been revised March 2011. The article is a contribution to develop models for transferring cadastral information at international level. In Europe, INSPIRE theme Cadastral Parcels has introduced a model for cadastral spatial data. Work with a wider perspective is currently taking place as ISO work, where the objective is to provide an international standard for the information used in land administration (Land Administration Domain Model). This article presents the Finnish cadastre and the concepts of basic property unit, parcel and right-of-use unit. The implementation of the INSPIRE Cadastral Parcels model in Finland is analyzed and could work as inspiration for other countries in their work. Handouts of the presentation as pdf (1,7 MB)
   
• March 2011 - Bashkim Idrizi, Macedonia (FYROM), Pal Nikolli, Albania, Murat Meha and Ismail Kabashi, Kosovo: Data Quality of Global Map and Some Possibilities/Limitations for Its Wide Utilization for Global Issues. This paper has been presented at the joint Commission 3 and Commission 7 Workshop in November 2010 in Sofia. It has been selected as the article of the month because it gives a good introduction on Global Map, its consistent quality and data standards and its value as a handy tool to monitor the environmental status at regional and global scale. FIG has also selected this paper as recognition of the professional development in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia (FYROM)
   
• February 2011 - Philipp Zeimetz and Heiner Kuhlmann, Germany: Validation of the Laboratory Calibration of Geodetic Antennas based on GPS Measurements. This paper is a peer reviewed paper presented at the FIG Congress in Sydney, Australia in April 2010. The topic of the paper is relevant to all who are interested in high precision GNSS surveying and it is presenting a new and innovative method for antenna calibration.
   
• January 2011 - Dr. Juha Talvitie, FIG Honorary President, Finland: The Evolution of FIG during the Last 20 Years. The paper is an extended version of the keynote presentation that Dr. Juha Talvitie gave at the FIG Handover Ceremony in Copenhagen, Denmark 27th November 2010. Dr. Talvitie was FIG President 1988-1991 and has been appointed as an FIG Honorary President for his contributions to the Federation. '