The global cadastre

The article discusses whether a globally connected cadastre is possible. Most land transactions occur in domestic, national land markets. However, many parties are now looking beyond their borders. Indeed, international land trading is burgeoning: governments, businesses and citizens from various countries, whether rich or poor, are now actively engaged as buyers and sellers in global land deals. Basically, it is easier to transact in the global market than ever before: land is increasingly a global commodity. The world's interconnected financial markets support this growing level of international trade and investment but, as one saw with financial markets in 2008, the quality of these global systems should not be taken for granted. Such foreign investment in land is not new: international companies have been investing for some time in commercial development, housing and mineral exploration, and more recently agriculture too

Property, Human Rights and Land Surveyors

Land surveyors in their capacity as land professional pursue their profession within the context of human rights law and are thus challenged to entrench human rights and human right approaches in their daily professional duties. The aim of this paper is to review the issue of property within international and regional human rights law and to deduct interfaces with the land surveyor’s profession

Authentic registers and good governance

The basic idea behind data infrastructures is that it provides for tools giving easy access to distributed databases to people who need those data for their own decision making processes. Although data infrastructures have a substantial component of information technology, the most fundamental asset is the data itself, because without data there is nothing to have access to, to be shared or to be integrated. Last decade it was understood that the development of data infrastructures not only provided easy access to distributed databases, but also gave good opportunities for re-thinking the role of information supply for the performance of governments. Based on this starting point, the ‘Streamlining Key Data’ Programme of the Netherlands' government took the lead in the development and implementation of a strategy for restructuring government information in such a way that an electronic government evolves that: · inconveniences the public and the business community with request for data only when this is absolutely necessary · offers them a rapid and good service · can not be misled · instills the public and the industrial community with confidence · is provided at a cost that is not higher than strictly necessary Jointly with 5 other government registers, the property registers & cadastral maps & topographic maps of the Netherlands' Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency are formally appointed in 2002 as ‘base registers’ of the governmental information infrastructure. The baseregisters will be the core of a system of so-called authentic registers, which might be any register that is maintained by a single government body and used by many others as the authentic source of certain data. If a register is formally designated as an authentic register, all other government organisations are strictly forbidden to collect the same data by themselves. In their budget allocation they will not find any money for data collection at this point

Seminar 1. The use of the Cadastre The use of the Cadastre among the Members States Property rights, land registration and Cadastre in the European Union

Abstrac

Computerized land registration systems

Paul van der Molen explains that unless adequate policies and institutions are in place, computerization will not necessarily reduce land tenure insecurity or improve the management of land resource

Informatiser ne suffit pas !

Paul van der Molen rappelle qu'en l'absence de politiques et d'institutions adéquates, l'informatisation ne réduira pas forcément l'insécurité en matière de droits fonciers et n'améliora pas la gestion des ressources foncières

Role of clinical questionnaires in optimizing everyday care of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of disability in all its stages, and death in patients with moderate or severe obstruction. At present, COPD is suboptimally managed; current health is often not measured properly and hardly taken into account in management plans, and the future risk for patients with regard to health status and quality of life is not being evaluated. This review addresses the effect of COPD on the lives of patients and examines ways in which existing assessment tools meet physicians’ needs for a standardized, simple method to measure consistently the full impact of COPD on patients in routine clinical practice. Current assessment of COPD severity tends to focus on airflow limitation, but this does not capture the full impact of the disease and is not well correlated with patient perception of symptoms and health-related quality of life. Qualitative studies have demonstrated that patients usually consider COPD impact in terms of frequency and severity of symptoms, and physical and emotional wellbeing. However, patients often have difficulty expressing their disease burden and physicians generally have insufficient time to collect this information. Therefore, it is important that methods are implemented to help generate a more complete understanding of the impact of COPD. This can be achieved most efficiently using a quick, reliable, and standardized measure of disease impact, such as a short questionnaire that can be applied in daily clinical practice. Questionnaires are precision instruments that contribute sensitive and specific information, and can potentially help physicians provide optimal care for patients with COPD. Two short, easy-to-use, specific measures, ie, the COPD Assessment Test and the Clinical COPD Questionnaire, enable physicians to assess patients’ health status accurately and improve disease management. Such questionnaires provide important measurements that can assist primary care physicians to capture the impact of COPD on patients’ daily lives and wellbeing, and improve long-term COPD management