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Solutions for 4D cadastre - with a case study on utility networks

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Solutions for 4D cadastre – with a case

study on utility networks
a b d d e
Fatih Döner , Rod Thompson , Jantien Stoter , Christiaan
c e d f d
Lemmen , Hendrik Ploeger , Peter van Oosterom & Sisi
d
Zlatanova
a
Department of Geomatics Engineering, Gümüşhane University,
Gumushane, Turkey
b
Department of Natural Resources and Mines Landcentre,
Queensland Government, Woollongabba, Queensland, Australia
c
International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth
Observation (ITC) Enschede, The Netherlands
d
OTB, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
e
Kadaster, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands
f
Faculty of Law, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands

Available online: 08 Aug 2011

To cite this article: Fatih Döner, Rod Thompson, Jantien Stoter, Christiaan Lemmen, Hendrik
Ploeger, Peter van Oosterom & Sisi Zlatanova (2011): Solutions for 4D cadastre – with a case study
on utility networks, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 25:7, 1173-1189

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 International Journal of Geographical Information Science
Vol. 25, No. 7, July 2011, 1173–1189

Solutions for 4D cadastre – with a case study on utility networks

Fatih Dönera*, Rod Thompsonb,d, Jantien Stoterd,e, Christiaan Lemmenc,e,
Hendrik Ploegerd,f, Peter van Oosteromd and Sisi Zlatanovad
a
Department of Geomatics Engineering, Gümüşhane University, Gumushane, Turkey; bDepartment of
Natural Resources and Mines Landcentre, Queensland Government, Woollongabba, Queensland,
Australia; cInternational Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
Enschede, The Netherlands; dOTB, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands; eKadaster,
Apeldoorn, The Netherlands; fFaculty of Law, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The
Downloaded by [Bibliotheek TU Delft] at 08:31 08 August 2011

Netherlands
(Received 24 December 2009; final version received 28 August 2010)

The increasing complexity and flexibility of modern land use requires that cadastres need
to manage information on the third and temporal (fourth) dimension. This article con-
siders the registration of legal space of utility networks in cadastre in this 3D + time (=4D)
context. A requirement analysis in three countries that have methods to register utility
networks complying with their legal, organizational and technical structure (Turkey, the
Netherlands and Queensland, Australia) is the basis for three alternatives for 4D cadastre
to register utility networks. The three alternatives are analysed with respect to legal,
organizational and technical cadastral requirements. This article presents a case study and
a prototype from the Netherlands. In this country by law utilities are considered to be real
estate objects with obligatory registration of ownership and geometry. This study shows
that the 3D space and separate temporal attributes approach (state-based model) is a very
promising solution to maintain temporal changes of utility networks and that this
approach is to be preferred above the current practice, where the 3D and temporal aspects
are not considered when registering a network.
Keywords: cadastre; land administration; 4D cadastre; spatio-temporal data models;
utility networks

1. Introduction
The use of land is always, at least implicitly, related to a certain amount of (3D) space and
spans a certain amount of time (3D + time, or 4D). The latter is well illustrated by leasehold
and time-shares. However, traditionally cadastres are based on a representation of the
division of land in 2D (i.e. parcels) on a certain moment in time, obscuring the 3D and 4D
aspects of land ownership in cadastral registers and maps (UN and FIG 1999, van der Molen
2003, Stoter 2004, van Oosterom et al. 2006). The currently registered 2D cadastral parcels
are not suitable for organizing and modelling the information of complex commodities and
interests in land (Bennett et al. 2008, Kalantari et al. 2008). Several researchers have
discussed options for transition of 2D registers to 2D + time or 3D (Stoter 2004,
Hespanha et al. 2006, van Oosterom et al. 2006). However, growing pressure on land and
rising land values have caused an increasing need for 4D (including 3D) information in

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1365-8816 print/ISSN 1362-3087 online

# 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2010.520272
http://www.informaworld.com
 1174 F. Döner et al.

cadastral registers. This observation is especially true for underground utilities. These
infrastructural objects are mostly located in a part of the parcel and may cross many parcel
boundaries, although most of those parcels will be owned by parties other than the network
manager. Furthermore, the utilities are often subsurface and have therefore a 3D character-
istic. Finally, the cadastral registration of utility networks includes temporal aspects, which
are (at a minimum) initial creation, changes during life time (including splitting and merging
networks) and finally deletion.
Insufficient and unclear information about location and depth of underground utilities
poses various problems, such as planning of surface and subsurface construction works.
Lack of proper information is a major cause of damage to the utilities during excavation
operations. The impact of this damage cannot be underestimated. For example, the economic
loss of the damage to gas pipelines in Bursa, Turkey, was US $200,000 in 2005 (Karatas
2007). In Istanbul (with over 15 million inhabitants), some accidents during excavation
operations resulted in damage to telecommunication networks and to a subway line, causing
Downloaded by [Bibliotheek TU Delft] at 08:31 08 August 2011

significant direct and indirect economic losses (Demir and Ozcelik 2007, Doner et al. 2008).
In China an economic loss of up to US $200 million per year is estimated due to damage to
underground utilities during the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s (Du et al. 2006). In the
Netherlands, 40,000 damage reports to infrastructures are reported on a yearly basis causing
about E40 million direct loss and E80 million indirect loss (NEN 2004). Statistics in other
countries (e.g. Roberts et al. 2002) reveal similar striking figures. Apart from the economic
losses, damage inflicted to utilities even resulted in tragic accidents, such as the
Ghislenghien disaster, the explosion of a high-pressure gas pipeline in Belgium that killed
24 and injured 132 persons (Aria 2009).
Furthermore, if utility services such as electricity and telecommunication are owned by
private companies, utility networks will become a commodity. A clear registration of the
legal situation of the utilities (ownership and other interests) is a condition for the transfer of
the networks and establishment of mortgages.
Although the actual needs for 4D cadastre in relation to the costs should also be under-
stood through market analysis, the research presented in this article explores the technical,
organizational and legal implications of 3D and 4D cadastres. The use of the third dimension
has proven to be especially relevant for the representation of the legal space around physical
objects that cross above or below land parcels, such as tunnels (Figure 1, left), underground
shopping malls and utility networks. In addition, the time dimension is required to be able to
record how the legal status of land is changing in time. In most cadastral registers, the time
dimension is represented by a versioning of the objects (the state-based model) represented

Figure 1 Left: Illustration of 3D (railway tunnel crosses several land parcels) and right: temporal
concept (changes of state of a subdivision) in cadastral register.
 International Journal of Geographical Information Science 1175

by timestamps that indicate the creation and deletion of represented objects in the cadastral
system, see Figure 1, right (van Oosterom 1997).
Establishing a 4D cadastre, which registers and provides access to (all required) 4D
information of real estate, is not simple, because it comprises legal, organizational as well as
technical issues. The research specifically focused on utility networks and consisted of
several steps. First, conceptual bases of a 4D cadastre have been studied based on Land
Administration Domain Model (LADM) (van Oosterom and Lemmen 2006, ISO/DIS 2010)
for utility networks to explain the specifics of physical and legal representations. The LADM
aims at standardization in cadastral domain, provides common definitions for land informa-
tion and facilitates the effective use, understanding and automation of land-related data
towards enhancing data sharing. The model gives a view of the relation between physical
and legal objects.
Second, an empirical case study was carried out in three countries: Turkey, the
Netherlands and Queensland (Australia). These countries have different approaches to 4D
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cadastre requirements fitting within their legal, organizational and technical frameworks.
Based on these three case studies, different alternatives for 4D cadastre are proposed and
evaluated against legal, organizational and technical criteria in the next phase of our research
to show how 4D requirements for utility networks in cadastral registrations may be met. A
detailed case study with a prototype developed for Rotterdam, the Netherlands, implements
the most advanced alternative to evaluate it in more detail.
The requirement analysis consisting of a study on the conceptual basis for 4D cadastre
and on 4D cadastral needs is presented in Döner et al. (2010). The requirement analysis is the
starting point of the alternative 4D cadastre solutions as studied in this article and therefore
summarized in Section 2. As answer to the requirement analysis, three alternative 4D
cadastre solutions are presented and discussed in Section 3. The detailed case study realizing
the most advanced alternative is presented in Section 4. This article ends with conclusions in
Section 5.

2. Requirements for registration of utility networks in 4D cadastre

As mentioned in the Introduction, the requirement analysis for 4D cadastre focused on the
registration of utility networks in Turkey, the Netherlands and Queensland (Australia). This
section starts with the background of the requirement analysis in Section 2.1 and then
summarizes the main findings in Section 2.2.

2.1. Background of the requirement analysis

The reason to select the three countries for the requirement analysis is that they have
fundamentally different ways to meet today’s requirements (see Table 1) for 4D cadastral
registration. Turkey was selected to describe the consequences for utility network registra-
tion if a land parcel-based system is kept unchanged and no legal registration exists for utility
networks beyond what is needed to provide insight into the location of the physical objects.
The Netherlands was selected because of the approach in which the utility networks are
legally registered (independently from cadastral parcels in the cadastral registration) and in
addition to that are separately included in a physical registration. Finally, in Queensland it is
possible to establish 3D cadastral parcels without maintaining a physical registration or a
complete network.
For the registration of utility networks, it is important to distinguish between legal and
physical registration of networks, as these registrations meet different requirements. The
 Downloaded by [Bibliotheek TU Delft] at 08:31 08 August 2011

Table 1. Requirement analysis for 4D cadastre looking at utility network registration in three countries.
Technical,
1176

legal or
Land/question organizational Turkey The Netherlands Queensland
Registration of legal L By means of easement rights established on Owned by legitimate Owned by constructor
ownership surface parcels constructor
Real estate by law L No Yes Not usually. The cross-river tunnel and some
sugar cane tramways are exceptions
Legal sourcea O Yes, if limited rights are applied to certain Yes, but not compulsory Yes
document contains part of the surface parcels, 2D descriptions
3D description can be shown on bases and make a right of
easement on title deed
Registration of O Yes, but not complete No single register exists, but No single register exists, but information on
physical network information on underground underground networks is made available
networks is made available
2D Visualization of T No, but high-voltage power lines can be seen No, but on a separate registered Usually not. Part of some networks can be
physical network on cadastre map network map seen as collections of easements, but need
on cadastral map not be complete. Also the purpose of an
easement is not present in a cadastral map
2D Visualization of T No, only as separate 2D drawing No, only encumbrances Yes, but not where the affected area is part of
F. Döner et al.

affected legal area a road, watercourse or state land

on cadastral map
3D Visualization of T No No No
networks possible
on the cadastral
map
3D spatial queries T No No No
Ownership data T No Yes Yes
queries
History data queries T Yes Yes Yes (for history created since 1997)
4D space/time L No No No
partition concept
Measurements to O+T No No No
guarantee 4D
space time
partition concept

Note: aA legal source document is required for the registration of ownership in relation to development, establishment, transaction or elimination of (parts of) networks.
 International Journal of Geographical Information Science 1177

physical registration requires detailed information on the location of networks and on the
person/company managing the network. The legal registration should provide a clear over-
view of the property rights involved: rights on the network on one hand (e.g. ownership and
mortgages) and rights on the land established for the benefit of the network on the other hand
(e.g. easements, leases). Note that it is possible that the legal space has already been included
in the cadastral registration, before the utility network has actually been constructed and
included in the physical registration. The physical registration can support the legal regis-
tration by providing information on the location of networks, but one should note that the
legal registration can be based on one moment in time of the physical registration. Therefore,
the physical registration of utilities might be inconsistent with the legal registration of the
same network, and as also shown in Döner et al. (2010), the legal registration cannot be used
to ascertain the exact location of the network (e.g. to prevent physical damages by construc-
tion works in the land). Most optimally, in case of updates (i.e. changes) in the physical
registration, a signal has to be sent to the legal system, which must then decide to move (or
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not) from the existing legal version of the utility network to a new version. In this scenario,
identifiers and timestamps are of crucial importance (Groothedde et al. 2008).
For studying 4D cadastre solutions, it is important to understand the equivalent of the
concepts ‘legal’ and ‘physical’ object in 2D. In 2D, a parcel is a legal object indicating the
extent of property rights (ownership, leasehold, easements, limited real rights such as
emphyteusis in civil law) of which the boundaries are not always easily traceable in the
terrain. Only when overlaying the parcel boundaries maintained in the cadastral database
with topography (i.e. representation of physical objects), the real estate objects can be
located. In a full 3D cadastre, a volumetric parcel is also a conceptual (legal) object, not
necessarily visible in reality and only indirectly related to physical objects. Therefore, it can
also be used for other purposes than the registration of ownership of 3D physical objects, for
example, to register the ownership of a safety zone for a tunnel or to register the ownership of
some space to assure future view from a building. In most cases in 2D, parcels are related to
physical objects because the ownership of a piece of land implies ownership of all physical
objects that are attached to it, if located within the parcel boundaries. In the same way, the
ownership of a 3D parcel implies the ownership of all physical objects that are located within
the space, for example tunnel or utility network. To be able to treat a physical object as an
entity and relate this to the corresponding object in the 4D cadastre would require establish-
ing 4D parcels, described by integrated 3D space and time dimensions.
A 4D parcel is defined as the spatio-temporal unit against which (one or more) unique
and homogeneous rights (e.g. ownership right or land use right), responsibilities or restric-
tions are associated to the whole entity, as included in a Land Administration system.
Homogenous means that the same combination of rights equally apply within the whole
4D spatio-temporal unit. Unique means that this is the largest spatio-temporal unit for which
this is true. Making the unit any larger (in 3D space or time) would result in the combination
of rights not being homogenous. Making the unit smaller (in 3D space or time) would result
in at least two neighbour 4D parcels with the same combinations of rights.

2.2. Main findings of the requirement analysis

From the results of the requirement analysis (summarized in Table 1), the following can be
concluded. First, only the registration in the Netherlands provides the possibility to register
the utility network in the cadastre as legal object as such, which means apart from (2D)
parcels. When registering the network, the location of the network can be indicated with
x,y,z-coordinates on the network map but this is not required. However, only few databases
 1178 F. Döner et al.

of utility network managers actually contain information on the z-coordinate. In addition

because the cadastral map is in 2D, the third dimension will not be visible on the map.
Although a 3D cadastral survey or other 3D description can be added to deeds, in practice
only few networks are available in 3D, which are never shown as such on the cadastral map
in the Netherlands. The situation in the Netherlands raises a fundamental question as
currently only a registration exists for utility networks: Why not allow the legal registration
of other physical objects such as a tunnel or an underground parking place?
Next to this ‘legal registration’ of the ownership rights and other interests in the utility
network, the cadastre in the Netherlands makes it possible to get the information on the
geometry (in 2D) of all known utilities on a certain spot: the ‘physical registrations’. In this
case the registration as such is not maintained by the cadastre, but kept by the utility
companies in their databases. However, the cadastre plays a key role by being by law the
central point for enquiries. Furthermore in near future, the cadastre is responsible to produce
a single (digital) map to the applicant of the information that combines the information
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provided by the utility owners.

As the utility networks cannot be registered themselves, in the cadastres in both Turkey
and Queensland, the network can only be traced through easements that may or may not have
been established for the networks (see Figure 2 for a fictive, exemplary situation). Therefore,
the cadastral map in both Queensland and Turkey will not give a complete overview of all
utility networks, because it depends on a specific situation of how the ownership of the
network is established. This may be even different for the same network.

Figure 2 Rights for utility network are established on intersecting parcels (fictive situation). It
depends per parcel on what kind of rights is established and therefore the cadastral map does not
provide a clear overview. In (a) rights are established on complete parcels; in (b) some parcels have
been subdivided to limit the rights for the utility network to the part of the parcel where the network is
located.
 International Journal of Geographical Information Science 1179

Despite these limitations in Queensland, it is the only country of the three studied where
it is possible to represent parcels in 3D, that is it is possible to provide the titles establishing
the property rights (e.g. lease, easement) with a 3D survey plan, describing the legal space
that is affected by the right. Volumetric survey plans have z-values on points that define
parcels or easements (referred to as rl – reduced levels). Horizontal positions of parcels are
only defined in relation to their adjoining parcels, and their metes and bounds are defined by
the measurements (bearings and distances) of their edges. These then have to be transformed
to fit into the 2D map of the digital cadastral database (DCDB). Despite the fact that 3D
survey plans/parcels have legal status, the solution in Queensland is not a complete solution
for 3D (nor 4D) cadastre. First, the interest parcel for a utility network must be located within
a single base parcel and therefore cannot cross several parcels, and the network is only
visible in the cadastre where it passes through (or above or below) non-government land.
Thus, it is not possible to define the legal space of the whole network. Moreover, for objects
within one parcel the Queensland solution has also limitations. As the 3D information is laid
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down on paper or scanned drawings as a 2D visualization, the 3D information cannot be

interactively viewed. In addition, the 3D properties are only described on drawings, that is no
3D primitive is used. Therefore, it is not possible to check if a valid 3D parcel has been
established; For example: Is the 3D parcel closed? Are the faces planar? Do any edges or
faces intersect? Finally, two or more neighbouring parcels cannot be visualized in one view
in 3D and it is also not possible to check how volumetric parcels spatially interact in 3D
(overlap, touch, etc.).
Based on the insights obtained from this requirement analysis, showing that organiza-
tional, legal and technical aspects interact, the next section explores several 4D cadastral
solutions.

3. Proposed solutions for a 4D cadastre

Three alternatives have been distinguished to register 3D and temporal aspects of utility
networks in cadastre:

(1) Creating a link between the parcels and the documents containing 3D information as
attribute when legal space is established for utility network;
(2) Copying 3D geometric description of the utilities into cadastre (i.e. the description of
the physical objects), which can be used to create the legal object;
(3) Creating 3D legal space and referring from the cadastre system to the corresponding
3D descriptions in external registrations of representations of the physical utility
networks.

This section evaluates the three alternatives against organizational, technical and legal
criteria.
In the first alternative, the currently available utility information (survey plans or
drawings) in the registration is attached to the cadastral parcel. This is often done to model
individual objects in the cadastre by linking the units to the parcels as an attribute. Although
simple, the method neglects the fact that these objects have their own geographic character-
istics. The disadvantages of this alternative are that information is not available in vector
format and in real world coordinates with related accuracies and that available information is
limited to registered rights on intersected parcels. Therefore, it is not possible to represent the
complete networks on the cadastral map, to query a network in the cadastral database or to
 1180 F. Döner et al.

integrate the geographic information of utility networks with geographic information of third
parties.
The second alternative takes the geographic characteristic of the objects into considera-
tion. In case of utility networks, a 3D geometric description of the physical object can be
obtained from the network operator and the whole network can be copied and stored
(registered) in the cadastre as an independent legal object. The represented physical object
is equal to the represented legal object in this approach. This alternative is less simple than
the first one, because it can be required to adjust the current system by organizing objects in
two layers: one layer for surface parcels and the other layer for 3D objects (under, through or
above the surface). The main advantage of such an approach is that it preserves also the
current surface layer. It should be noted that the temporal aspect is still a problem because the
geometry is a copy at a certain moment in time. Furthermore, handling changes in a part of
the network is now ‘solved’ in a non-optimal manner, that is through static updates, because
no dynamic link exists.
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The third alternative requires the use of a geographic information infrastructure (GII) to
access information on utility networks. The idea behind this alternative is that the cadastre
can benefit from distributed registrations within a GII by dynamically linking information
from utility networks maintained in different databases. In this approach, geometry of
utilities can be maintained at their original source outside the responsibility of cadastre
although this information can be accessed from cadastre any moment needed.
The advantage of the second and third alternatives is that the availability of the physical
object (2D/3D) in the cadastre could improve the current situation of registration of utility
networks. For example, in this way, ‘gaps’ in the registration where no rights are registered
on the parcel could be avoided and traced (Stoter and Ploeger 2003). In addition, the physical
network can be used for registration of legal space that encloses the physical network object
(e.g. applying a buffer around the physical network). Consequently, the legal situation
above, on and under land is better reflected in the cadastre.
The main difference between the second and the third alternatives is that the second
copies the data (of physical objects), whereas in the third alternative the utility companies
remain responsible to maintain the data and to provide a reference to the geometric descrip-
tion. In both solutions, a process should be implemented, which generates a legal object from
the physical object. Therefore, the third alternative is the ideal solution because it supports
sharing and multipurpose use of geographic data. In this context, the temporal aspect is a key
aspect where one registration is referring to objects in another and not the other way around.
The referred object may change over time (or even be removed). Therefore to keep the
references correct and the systems consistent, one must be able to refer to a specific version
in time that always has to be available. This is specifically important where the reference is
used not only for querying but also to identify the spatial extent to which rights apply in the
land administration.

4. Detailed 4D cadastre case study

To investigate the proposed 4D cadastral alternatives, a detailed case study has been
conducted, including the development of a prototype. Underground utilities were organized
into a spatial database then accessed, queried and visualized in 3D. The fourth dimension
(time) is represented by timestamps, capturing state of spatial objects (Zaniolo et al. 1997,
Guting and Schneider 2005). In fact this case study illustrates the second and third alter-
natives together, as it is not relevant in the prototype where the data are actually maintained.
Data sets provided by the Municipality of Rotterdam are the underground utility networks
 International Journal of Geographical Information Science 1181

(cables and pipelines), parcel boundaries, buildings with elevation information and terrain
height points. Note that the buildings and pipelines should be considered as 3D legal objects/
spaces in this case study (but it is true that the actual data in this case are taken from the
physical objects). Section 4.1 describes the implementation of the prototype, Section 4.2
describes the editing and visualization of utility network-related data and Section 4.3 shows
some database queries in the 4D cadastre prototype system.

4.1. Implementation of the prototype

For the prototype, z-values were assigned to the utility networks. Constant (relative) z-values
were given to utility networks based on Dutch standards as 1.00 m depth for pipelines and
0.60 m depth for cables. It should be noted that many of the networks in the Rotterdam
Municipality (e.g. in the area of Port Rotterdam) obtain absolute z-coordinates from GPS
measurements before newly laid-out cables and pipes are buried.
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Second, 3D coordinates were assigned to 2D parcels and buildings to relate the parcel
and building data sets to the underground networks. For the buildings single height values
for each building were provided by the Rotterdam Municipality. These values were main-
tained as attributes in the database and used to create the 3D extruded building (in geo-
graphic information systems (GIS) software). The z-coordinates of buildings’ footprints and
all the parcels were derived from the terrain elevation model generated from terrain point
heights. In this implementation, all the data sets were represented with their absolute
coordinates in the database.
After having the parcels, buildings and utility networks available in 3D, in the next step,
these three data sets were imported in Oracle Spatial 11g. The geometry model
(SDO_GEOMETRY) of Oracle Spatial was used to manage the spatial objects. This
model has several primitive geometry types (and collections of them) such as point, point
cluster, line string, polygon, multipolygon, arc line string, arc polygon, compound line
string, compound polygon, circle and rectangle. Although the geometry model of Oracle
Spatial supports 3D geometries, the topological model (e.g. for parcel boundaries) is still 2D
(Oracle 2007).
To address the needs of storage and querying of 3D data, SDO_GEOMETRY data types
have been enhanced by Oracle to store 3D data, and additional functionality for the efficient
storage, query and management of such 3D data inside the database has been created by
Oracle. Spatial queries can be performed either by using a spatial index and associated
spatial operators or by using geometry processing functions, which are also referred to as
spatial functions. For example, the SDO_RELATE identifies the spatial objects that have a
particular spatial interaction with a given object, the SDO_WITHIN_DISTANCE operator
determines if two spatial objects are within a specified distance of each other and the
SDO_NN operator identifies the nearest neighbours for a spatial object (Kothuri et al.
2007). To have any operators considering all three dimensions, the dimension of the data
must be specified in the PARAMETERS clause (‘sdo_indx_dims=3’) of the CREATE
INDEX statement when the spatial index is created on a spatial table.
The information about utility networks (i.e. pipelines), buildings and cadastral parcels is
stored in different tables in the spatial database. The content of pipeline table ‘pipeline’ in
Oracle Spatial is given below as example (Table 2). In addition to tables, metadata are
maintained in Oracle Spatial by describing the dimension, lower and upper bounds and
tolerance in each dimension. Finally, spatial indexes (3D R-tree) are created on the tables to
speed up spatial queries. Creation of spatial indices is necessary for efficient access to data
after the data have been loaded into spatial tables.
 1182 F. Döner et al.

Table 2. Content of pipeline table ‘pipeline’ in Oracle Spatial.

Column name Data type Description
IDBUIS NUMBER(11) Primary key
AANTAL NUMBER(11) Pipeline number
IDBEHEERDE NUMBER(11) Owner number
IDSPANNING NUMBER(11) Pressure
PIB NUMBER(11) Licence number
AANVULLEND CHAR(50) Additional
STEUNTEKST CHAR(50) Support text
TYPE ENUMERATION Type of network
STATUS NUMBER(11) Status of network
BELOWSURFACE BOOLEAN Underground or not
DANGEROUS BOOLEAN Dangerous or not
MATERIALTYPE NUMBER(11) Material type
DIAMETER NUMBER(11) Diameter
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TMIN Date Installation date

TMAX Date Deletion date
GEOM MDSYS.SDO_GEOMETRY Gtype = 3002 (3D line)

The implementation of time (4D) in this case study adopts the technical solution of 3D
data types with separate temporal attributes. Two different approaches can be chosen: event-
and state-based modelling (Guting and Schneider 2005). In event-based modelling, transac-
tions are modelled as separate entities within the system (with their own identity and set of
attributes). When the start state is known and all events are known, it is possible to
reconstruct every state in the past by traversing the whole chain of events. In state-based
modelling, the states (i.e. the results) are modelled explicitly: every object gets (at least) two
dates/times. Through the comparison of two succeeding states, it is possible to reconstruct
what happened as a result of one specific event. It is very easy to obtain the state at a given
moment in time, by selecting the object based on this moment being within the time interval
(Lemmen and van Oosterom 2006). Therefore, the state-based model has been applied in this
case study to model the time dimension. Two dates are attached to spatial objects (utility
networks) to indicate the time interval during which these objects are valid: the start and end
dates. The end date is unspecified if the object is currently still valid. Time information for
parcels and buildings was readily available in the cadastre data. Since 1997, the Netherlands
Cadastre keeps track of change per spatial object with two attributes tmin and tmax (Tijssen
et al. 2001, van Oosterom and Lemmen 2001). Rotterdam Municipality maintains records of
the time a utility network has been laid down and these were used to represent the fourth
dimension for utility networks.

4.2. Editing and visualization of utility data

The database management system (DBMS) only provides a solution for data management
(storage, query, analysis) and a front-end tool is required for visualizing the information
stored in the DBMS so that a user can better understand the meaning of the information (see
Figure 3). The 3D spatial data are stored in the spatial columns within the DBMS, and a
connection needs to be built so that a display tool may access the spatial column and retrieve
the data for 3D visualization (Khuan et al. 2008).
Many front-end applications (GIS/computer-aided design (CAD)) can be used to access,
to query, to visualize and to edit the spatial data stored in the DBMS. In this research two
 International Journal of Geographical Information Science 1183
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Figure 3 3D visualization of pipelines using cylinders and rectangular pipelines (Du et al. 2006).

commercial mainstream software packages have been used, one of which is CAD (Bentley’s
Microstation v8) and the other is a GIS application (ESRI’s ArcGIS 9.2). The solution of
accessing data with a CAD system offers many possibilities such as flexible tools for 3D
editing, adaptable, user-friendly graphic user interfaces, advanced means for realistic render-
ing and navigation through 3D models, creating animations, different views and export data
in various formats (Breunig and Zlatanova 2006). To visualize data, the user has to connect
to Oracle Spatial database. Then, CAD application checks the Oracle metadata table for the
name of the table(s) and corresponding columns that contain spatial data. Using extensibility
options of the CAD systems, it is even possible to create on the fly 3D cylindrical or
rectangular pipes for more realistic visualization (see Du et al. 2006). The GIS application,
on the contrary, provides tools for 2D query of spatial data as well as 3D visualization
(Zlatanova and Stoter 2006).
The steps needed to access the data stored in spatial database with the GIS application are
described in Stoter and Zlatanova (2003). The difference between the CAD and GIS
application is that GIS packages usually support (only) 2D editing, analysis and
 1184 F. Döner et al.

visualization and also provides 2.5D functionality. The CAD packages on the contrary
usually support 3D editing and visualization, but are limited with respect to analysis of
geographic information. Figure 4 shows screenshots of CAD and GIS application for
accessing, editing, querying and visualization of 3D utility data.

4.3. Queries in DBMS realizing 4D cadastre prototype

Apart from editing and visualization in 3D, it is important to perform spatial queries on the
data to obtain information from the 4D cadastre prototype. The examples provided below are
executed on the table ‘pipeline’ (as presented in Table 2), table ‘building’ (i.e. 3D buildings)
and the table ‘parcel’ (i.e. 3D cadastral parcels). In the context of the ISO 19152 LADM,
these tables would then represent three levels (LA_Level) with LA_SpatialUnits: the
‘parcel’ table corresponds to the open 3D columns and the ‘pipeline’ and ‘building’ tables
correspond to closed 3D parcels/spaces, which have to be subtracted from the columns.
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Below a number of example queries illustrate how these different levels can be combined in
various manners.
The following query selects pipelines within a 100-m distance of a specific building
(with id = 57) together with their installation dates. Results were limited to the pipelines
installed before 2005.

SELECT p.IDBUIS, p.TMIN

FROM building b, pipeline p
WHERE b.id = ‘57’
AND SDO_WITHIN_DISTANCE

Figure 4 Accessing, editing, querying and visualizing the data by means of CAD and GIS applica-
tions: (a) accessing and editing of 3D data with a CAD application; 2D querying (b) and 3D
visualization (c) with GIS application.
 International Journal of Geographical Information Science 1185

(b.GEOM, p.GEOM, ‘DISTANCE=100’) = ‘TRUE’ AND p.TMIN,date ‘2005-01-01’;

This query returns following result:
IDBUIS PIPELINE_
------- ----------
72573 25-JUL-04
125994 25-JUL-04
125995 25-JUL-04
72572 25-JUL-04
...
13 rows selected.

Using the spatial functions and operators, queries about the depth of the pipelines, which
can be formulated as ‘what is the vertical distance between a parcel and pipeline’ or ‘is a
pipeline at a particular distance from a cadastral parcel’, can be performed. The
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SDO_GEOM.SDO_DISTANCE function was used in the following Oracle SQL statement

to compute the 3D distance between a surface parcel (e.g. having a number 6451) and a
specific pipeline (e.g. having an id = 73,560) under that parcel. Please note that the
assumption here is that all data sets are inside one DBMS.

SELECT SDO_GEOM.SDO_DISTANCE (pa.GEOM, p.GEOM, 0.005)

Distance3D_parcel_to_pipeline
FROM parcel pa, pipeline p
WHERE pa.kad_nummer = ‘6451’ AND p.idbuis = ‘73560’;
Result of this query:
DISTANCE3D_PARCEL_TO_PIPELINE
------------------------------
5.44526788
Figure 5 shows the representation of the underground pipeline as being used in the query
together with the representations of surface parcels. Surface of the parcel, in this query, is
defined by assigning x,y,z-coordinates to vertices describing the parcel boundaries (a poly-
gon in 3D space).
In most application scenarios for utilities, spatial relationships of geometries such as
‘nearest to’ or ‘within a specified radius from’ are needed. The next example shows how to
query the nearest buildings and their distances to a specific pipeline (e.g. with id = 73,570) in
spatial database. The SDO_NN operator of Oracle Spatial was used to perform this query. The
number of the geometries returned was limited to four by using the sdo_num_res keyword:

SELECT b.id Building_ID,

SDO_GEOM.SDO_DISTANCE(b.GEOM, p.GEOM,0.5,‘UNIT=M’) Distance
FROM building b, pipeline p
WHERE p.idbuis=‘73570’
AND SDO_NN(b.GEOM, p.GEOM,‘sdo_num_res=4’)=‘TRUE’
ORDER BY Distance;
This query returns the following result:
BUILDING_ID DISTANCE
------------ ---------
63319 6.46961534
63181 6.575846
 1186 F. Döner et al.

Figure 5 Underground pipeline used in the query together with surface parcels and buildings.

63183 6.58915516
63227 6.68007334
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4 rows selected.

A frequently needed query is finding all underground networks in a given region. The
SDO_RELATE operator of Oracle Spatial was used to identify the underground cables that
have a particular spatial interaction with an area of interest given. Here, this area of interest is
a query window defined by a rectangle with lower-left and upper-right coordinates in
national reference system. The mask keyword identifies a specific type of interaction such
as intersection, touching the boundaries, being completely inside and so on.

SELECT p.idbui CableID

FROM pipeline p
WHERE SDO_RELATE(p.GEOM,
SDO_GEOMETRY(2003, 28992, NULL,
SDO_ELEM_INFO_ARRAY(1,1003,3),
SDO_ORDINATE_ARRAY(94000,435800, 94030,435810)),
‘mask=anyinteract’) = ‘TRUE’ ORDER BY CableID;
Result of this query:
CABLE_ID
---------
80834
81777
282543
284282
284302
286122
289123
7 rows selected.

The query is on both the 2D (area of interest) and on the 3D (cable) object. In this case the
SDO_RELATE operator ignores the z-coordinate of the 3D object. It should be noticed that a
similar query can be used to find all the cables that cross a certain parcel (i.e. the geometry of
the parcel should be given instead of the area of interest). Queries presented here are just a
few examples among others addressing requirements given in Table 1.
The selected system architecture based on integration of DBMS for management and
spatial querying of the data with front-end applications for access and visualization of the
 International Journal of Geographical Information Science 1187

data is a promising option to improve registration of utilities in current practice. In this way,
the geometry of utilities remains at its original source whereas this information can be
accessed from cadastre to register the legal space of these physical utility objects. By
representing the whole network in cadastre, spatial analyses within the network can be
performed together with other cadastral data sets. The approach can also represent safety
areas of physical objects when included for registration, for example space around antennas
and high-voltage power lines.

5. Conclusions
Because of the complex management tasks, modelling dynamic and multidimensional
spatial information has become one of the challenging topics in cadastres. Because utility
networks are typical objects with 4D characteristics in a cadastre, the current physical and
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legal registration of utilities in three countries (Turkey, the Netherlands and Queensland,
Australia) was the starting point to study three different 4D cadastre alternatives. A 4D
cadastre alternative for GII-based management of physical and legal networks has been
proposed. The analysis and the tests (Rotterdam prototype) have shown that the 4D (=3D
space + time) cadastre is possible from legal, organizational and technical perspective.

5.1. Legal
An approach to improve the current registrations of utility networks could be to keep the
geometry of physical utility networks in the databases of utility companies and dynamically
refer to this information from the cadastre. The legal objects for utility networks can then be
generated in a controlled (regulated) manner from the 3D descriptions of the physical
objects. Because of the permanent link, the legal registration can be better maintained.
This fits well in the LADM (van Oosterom and Lemmen 2006, ISO/DIS 2010). LADM
distinguishes between physical representation of the spatial object (outside the scope of the
LADM) and a legal registration of the space (within the scope of the LADM) needed by the
physical objects. Concerning the legal aspect of a 4D cadastre, it can be concluded that the
spatial (3D) aspect of a cadastre will only be relevant against a legal background that
recognizes the possibility of a stratification of land ownership, although the time aspect as
such will be relevant for any system of land administration.

5.2. Organizational
The organizational aspect on which the best (i.e. third) alternative is based relies heavily on
the use of the GII and accessing remote data maintained by another organization. Besides the
technical aspects, this also requires organizational agreements. With this approach, it
becomes possible to detect (unwanted) differences between the 3D physical objects itself
and the property rights. The registered legal objects may not necessarily coincide with
physical objects. For example, the rights on the land in which the utility is constructed
may give not only the ownership to the utility, but also the rights to a certain space, a ‘buffer’
around the utility. However, a link between a physical registration and a legal registration
within the GII enables efficient checking of the consistency between the two. Organizational
arrangements have to be made to resolve the differences and to make sure that after changes
at the side of the physical networks also the legal counterpart is updated (of course in a
controlled/regulated procedure). Probably the preferred approach would be to first arrange
 1188 F. Döner et al.

the legal space and then perform the actual construction of the physical networks (within the
legal spaces).

5.3. Technical
The proposed solution for 4D registrations of utilities in the cadastre is based on 3D
geometry data types and separate temporal attributes. In the prototype environment
(DBMS and GIS), the 3D geometric description of utilities, buildings and parcels was
organized in a spatial database and tested with a case study in Rotterdam (the
Netherlands). In this environment, the relationships between utility networks and other
cadastral objects are visible. In addition, a spatial analysis within the network and between
other data sets is possible in the DBMS. Furthermore, 4D utility and cadastral data can be
effectively managed in a database whereas processes on networks such as editing and
visualization can be performed by using standard functionality of the front-end software.
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The 4D cadastre solutions as studied in this article are more sustainable regarding 4D
than observed practice, where the 3D and temporal aspects are not considered when
registering a network. Specifically, the third alternative where the physical registration of
utility companies is dynamically linked with the cadastral registration within a GII looks
promising. From our case study, we can conclude that the 3D space and separate temporal
attributes approach (state-based model) is sufficient to model temporal changes of utility
networks. However, it should be noted that the 4D integrated data type is necessary to model
dynamic objects such as parcel boundaries that follow the movements of natural features
such as coastlines or river borders. This requires further study. Another important issue is
availability and quality of 3D data. Height information of future utilities (also for other 3D
objects such as apartment buildings) should be provided in an absolute manner instead of
relative heights with respect to surface (as used in our case study) because absolute
coordinates are more stable and they provide unambiguous definitions of the 3D objects.

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