Transformations of Cadastral Descriptions with Incomplete Information into Maps

Abstract

AbstractBrazil is one of the countries of the world where the ownership cadastre is still based on textual descriptions. Until 2001 (and for the urban cadastre still until today), no standards existed concerning obligatory elements or the necessary degree of precision for cadastral deeds. This resulted in documents similar to metes‐and‐bounds descriptions that often include vague expressions or relative references e.g. to neighbouring real estate. In order to facilitate error‐ and inconsistency‐checks as well as planning and decision‐making, the demand arises to visualise the textual information in maps. Existing programs for a transformation of metes‐and‐bounds descriptions already use additional logic to handle inconsistencies or missing information but are still rather limited in their abilities if too much uncertainty is incorporated in the text, i.e. corresponding maps to such texts are (if at all) only partially generated. Therefore, this article analysed whether or not all (even uncertain) of the spatial information in the descriptions can be transformed into a suitable map representation. This requires among other things a quantification of the qualitative expressions for lengths and directions that are used in the texts.