Modelling 3D legal spaces of Public Law Restrictions within the context of LADM revision

Abstract

Intense exploitation of land in the vertical direction has brought up complex legal relations between different types of spatial units with various characteristics (e.g., land, marine, air, underground parcels, and infrastructure objects). Therefore, the use of 3D models is required to clearly represent real property and associated Rights, Restrictions and Responsibilities (RRRs), deriving both from Private and Public Law. The latter are either not registered to cadastral systems (i.e., in The Netherlands very few have been registered like the private natural beauty areas, as they came with tax benefits), or are recorded to individual, thematic registries. Public Law Restrictions (PLRs) impose significant impact on ownership rights and land management, thus requiring to be systematically organized and registered. This brings out issues of identifying which types of PLRs need to be registered (based on land administration policies that apply in each country/ jurisdiction), selecting and “spatializing” them (in 2D/3D/nD). Within the field of land administration, the ISO 19152:2012 Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) plays predominant role in standardizing legal relations between parties (people) and spatial units (land). LADM is currently under revision with its second edition widening its scope as a multipart standard comprising 6 Parts. The revision of LADM stimulates discussion on new concepts that could be included at the Edition II, and possibilities of refining the existing ones. In this context, the paper investigates the option to model PLRs into the multipart standard and investigates how to optimally categorize them based on the LADM Edition II Parts. The paper builds on previous work by the authors and aims to propose a flexible framework to model PLRs at conceptual level in the context of LADM Edition II. To validate the modelling proposal, two case studies of PLRs are studied. The first one relates to the restrictions imposed on land parcels crossed by the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) in Northern Greece, and they refer to the establishment of protection zones, where construction and agricultural restrictions apply. The second case study refers to land use restrictions in the vicinity of an archaeological site in the municipality of Patras, in southern Greece. Those use cases were selected because of their generic character that may apply to other countries/ jurisdictions, regardless of legal framework differences.