Part III-B Learning from Practice: GIS as a Tool in Planning Sustainable Development Natural and Cultural Heritage © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 349 20 The Development of the Cross-Border Region of Hungary and Austria Analyzed with Historical Cadastral and Land Register Data Susanne Steiner CONTENTS 20.1 Introduction 350 20.2 Project Area 350 20.2.1 A Brief Historical Overview 351 20.2.2 Land Management System in Austria 353 20.2.3 Land Management System in Hungary 354 20.3 Methodology 354 20.3.1 Previous Investigations and Results 355 20.4 Data Acquisition 355 20.4.1 Nonspatial Data 355 20.4.2 Conceptual Database Design 355 20.4.3 Spatial Data 357 20.4.4 Modeling the Cadastral Reality 357 20.4.5 Parcel-Related and Ownership Changes 358 20.4.6 Database Processing 359 20.5 Results 359 20.5.1 Land-Use Changes 360 20.5.2 Changes in Parcel Geometry 360 20.5.3 Ownership Changes 361 20.6 Problems Encountered 362 20.7 Outlook 363 20.8 Conclusions 363 Acknowledgments 364 References 364 © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 350 GIS for Sustainable Development 20.1 INTRODUCTION Many land-use planning decisions ultimately are tied to land ownership and parcels. Therefore, the analyses of past land use dynamics cannot be considered only as historic research, but in fact, the development of land and property is an interesting starting point for decisions in recent land management. To serve the demand, for example, of land planners to base their work on research and historic data, a study was conducted to show that past developments in land administration can illustrate future trends. For the study, a border region between Austria and Hungary was chosen, where changing agrarian policy conditions and their effects over the inter- vening years can be comprehended and compared. Border regions provide interesting historical details regarding the structure of agricultural land, the enlargement of settlement area, and economic and social situations. An interesting example is the mentioned border region between Hungary and Austria, where changing nationalities of the area due to historical facts influenced the economic development. The last century, with changing political conditions, shaped the region on both sides of the borderline in different ways. Agricultural land as well as building land was affected by political upheavals, and those changes have been registered in land administration documents. The objective of the study, carried out by a bilateral project team consisting of Hungarian as well as Austrian researchers, was to reconstruct and analyze cadastre- based land use (the term “land use” is referring to cadastral determination, which need not necessarily correspond with real land cover) and ownership changes in the cross-border region of Austria and Hungary and to quantify the influences of external effects like socioeconomic and/or political changes on parcel-based land use and property rights. The investigations in both regions were based on cadastral and land register data that were available in a time series of one hundred years. Based on derived results, some general statements on the rural development trends for these particular border regions could be drawn up. A geographic information system was used for analyzing and visualizing changes regarding land use and parcel geometry based on a database and on spatial cadastral data. In this chapter the methodology of acquisition, analyses, and visualization of spatial and nonspatial land administration data is described. It will be shown how the integration of two different land administration data as well as historic and recent data sets into one cross-national database was solved. In addition, a model will be presented which is able to reconstruct a certain point of time in “cadastral history” by imitating the process of land registration. The last section will provide some results concerning land- use, parcel, and ownership changes in the investigation area, and finally the outlook offers some future perspectives on the region based on the analysis results. 20.2 PROJECT AREA The cross-border region between Austria and Hungary had been an area without hinterland for over 40 years. The so-called iron curtain created an insuperable barrier where social and economic exchange between both regions was no longer possible © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC The Development of the Cross-Border Region of Hungary and Austria 351 [1]. Due to political reasons these two border areas developed in very different ways regarding their rural conditions. Differences are still visible in the landscape; for instance the average size of agricultural patterns in Hungary is much higher than those in Austrian arable land. This characteristic agricultural structure is still recog- nizable (e.g., on satellite or aerial images; Figure 20.1). The area of two small adjacent municipalities was chosen for comparing and adequate for the research due to their location near the borderline and due to comparable socioeconomic and demographic conditions. The criteria are, on the one hand, comparable number of inhabitants, similar ownership structures as well as distribution of property and parcel patterns (at least originally in pre-Communistic times). On the other hand, both regions are considered as rural areas from the regional planning point of view, with agricultural land dominating land use, based on similar climatic and soil conditions. Additional criteria for selecting the project areas Girm in Austria and Harka in Hungary included the availability of historical and current cadastral maps in terms of complete time series for one century. The investigation area covered building land as well as agricultural-dominated parts. 20.2.1 A B RIEF H ISTORICAL O VERVIEW Land administration is defined as “the process of determining, recording and dis- seminating information about tenure, value and use of land when implementing land FIGURE 20.1 Recent satellite image (Landsat TM) showing the agricultural land at the border area of Hungary and Austria. The white line highlights the boundary between small- scaled patterns of the Austrian territory and the obviously larger fields in Hungary. © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC analyzing ownership and land-use changes (Figure 20.2). They were considered as 352 GIS for Sustainable Development FIGURE 20.2 Location of project areas. © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC The Development of the Cross-Border Region of Hungary and Austria 353 management policies” [2]; in other words, land administration is “the process of admin- istering the complex rights, restrictions and responsibilities pertaining to land” [3]. Land administration generally consists of spatial data, respectively, the cadastre and nonspatial data known as land register. While in the cadastre the parcel infor- mation itself concerning location, area, and land use is stored, the land register provides ancillary information (e.g., property rights or debt) related to the parcels and the ownership. During the era of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (K&K Monarchy) from 1867 to 1918, the land registration was administered by one common cadastral mapping authority, which basically aimed at creating tax maps of land property. Over time, different political and economic developments (First and Second World War, Com- munistic era in Hungary from 1949 to 1989) resulted in different agrarian and land administration systems and, combined with that, in different land management systems. As a consequence, the different systems in land registration led to diversities in registration of spatial parcel-based data and ancillary ownership data. An interesting aspect of this case study was to find out if and in which way political systems and related land management influenced and still influences land use and ownership. 20.2.2 L AND M ANAGEMENT S YSTEM IN A USTRIA The cadastre is kept and maintained by the Federal Office of Metrology and Sur- veying (BEV). Cadastre and Land Register together form the basis for land man- agement in Austria. These two “spatial related data pools” have always been kept separately by two different authorities but with high effort on synchronization of data. The roots of Austrian cadastre mapping trace back to the early nineteenth century, when land surveying had been introduced as taxation basis for the whole monarchy. These ancient cadastre maps are maintained in archives and are still useful for historical investigations of any kind (Figure 20.3). FIGURE 20.3 Historical cadastral map of the Austrian test site from 1857. © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 354 GIS for Sustainable Development In the 1980s, survey ordinances started digitizing analogue maps within a CAD system [4]. A unique parcel identifier for each estate realized the link between spatial data and land register data that is still kept in a separated database. Recently, the cadastral data is already available as GIS vector format including topology (previ- ously it was simple line data in dwg drawing file format), but there has not yet been developed a common geographic database for cadastre and ownership information together. The land register that represents the legal status of all real property is maintained and kept by the local courts of law. Since 1987, the land register has also been available in digital format, but only authorized users such as lawyers have access to these data, in order to protect the data privacy [5]. 20.2.3 LAND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN HUNGARY Land and property registration in Hungary has been operational for nearly one and a half centuries, having its origins, as mentioned before, in times of the K&K Monarchy. After all-embracing collectivization processes during the Communistic era, pri- vate ownership of agricultural land was substituted by cooperative and state property, leading to huge agrarian production centers and collective farms. These are farms in which a group of farmers pool their land, domestic animals, and agricultural implements, retaining as private property only enough for the members’ own sus- tenance. The profits of the farm are divided among its members, in contrast to cooperative farming, where farmers retain private ownership of the land. Today’s land administration consists of the Department of Lands and Mapping (DLM), Regional Development (MARD), and the Land Office Network (LON). The registration of ownership and immovable properties has been fully computerized since 1991 (with the support of the European Commission under the PHARE pro- gram). The system is open for the public and is backed by state guarantee. Additional services are the updating of land-use information, classification/evaluation of land, land consolidation piloting, and maintenance of land-related statistics [6]. During the recent economic transition, a major priority of successive governments has been to redistribute land from state ownership and from cooperatives to individuals. This process has been managed for agricultural areas partly by the Land Offices and has placed great demands on the offices, which had to provide information on the past and present ownership status, carry out definitive surveys, subdivide large plots into many small ones, and register more than 2.4 million new owners. “Land privatization affects more than half of the territory of Hungary (5.6 out of 9.3 million hectares). The new parcels created during land privatization are scattered all over the country and this makes it impossible to keep the old cadastral maps up-to-date” [7]. 20.3 METHODOLOGY In this project phase cadastre and land register data from the present land adminis- tration systems was acquired and collected. The basis for a comparability of different data sets is the harmonization, which was solved by the integration of data into one database for both countries. © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC The Development of the Cross-Border Region of Hungary and Austria 355 While spatial data (cadastre) was stored within a geographic database, nonspatial data (all additional information mainly about ownership) was registered within a separate relational database. Data flow between these two separate databases was realized through the use of a unique parcel identifier. Based on the resulting com- prehensive data records, all land-use and ownership changes that ever occurred for a period of one century could be reconstructed, analyzed, and visualized. Spatial analyses and the presentation of visual results were performed by a geographic information system. These analyses were topologically based on vector- ized (digitized) cadastral maps, where each parcel represents a spatial object having a unique identifier. 20.3.1 P REVIOUS I NVESTIGATIONS AND R ESULTS Preliminary studies had been carried out that were considered as prototypes for the study. The core aims of this pilot project were basically the same (analyzing land use and parcel changes as well as ownership changes), but focusing on a much smaller investigation area and covering only the center and parts of agricultural land of both municipalities. The results and experiences of these previous studies turned out as basis for further investigations. Due to limited temporal and financial resources, the pre-study mentioned was restricted to just fifty years as a research period. 20.4 DATA ACQUISITION Data collection of land register data was carried out at the responsible local and regional public authorities in Hungary and Austria. Historical data could be tracked out in several archives and was transferred into digital format (database entries of ownership data, digitizing of cadastre data) while the current data sets were already digitally available. Data acquisition represented the most time-consuming phase of the project. For this reason, a well-planned database for fast and semiautomated data entry was an important precondition. 20.4.1 N ONSPATIAL D ATA Nonspatial data in our case have a direct relation to a parcel and therefore to location, but are not considered as “real” spatial data, in the sense of data that can be linked to locations in geographic space. Therefore the inclusion into the project’s database and the later linkage to the spatial data had to be well figured out. In this case nonspatial data comprise all ancillary information related to the single estate regard- ing property rights, distribution of property among owners, and number of owners per parcel. 20.4.2 C ONCEPTUAL D ATABASE D ESIGN The project database consists of the main entities “ownership,” “parcel,” and “land between ownership and parcel in Austria and Hungary is a one-to-many relationship: © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC use,” defined as a one-to-many relationship (Figure 20.4). Basically, the relation 356 GIS for Sustainable Development one owner holds one or more parcels. The particular regulation in the Austrian cadastre and land register though knows so-called “storage numbers,” which are identification numbers for one or more owners. These owners can be married people, brothers and sisters, or agrarian communities. Therefore, the exact relationship should be described as a many-to-many relationship. Since this fact makes modeling much more complicated, the project consortium agreed on the simplified version of a one-to-many relation: one ownership holds one or more parcels. This system was valid for the Hungarian system until about 1950 as well. After the assumption of the Communistic system the conditions turned to a “modified” one-to-many rela- tionship: one collective held a lot of parcels. Recently the registration system in Hungary was again changed into a “real” one-to-many relationship: one owner (not ownership) holds one or more parcels. Since for one parcel often exists more than one land use type (e.g., building and adjacent garden on one parcel), also the relation between land use and parcel was organized as a one-to-many relationship. Further tables act as look-up tables in the database. Figure 20.4 shows the entity relationship model. For the conceptual database design these considerations were important basic issues. The most challenging part of the project was the harmonization of two national land administration systems and the modeling of the “cadastral and land register reality.” Detailed work had been invested in the conceptual design of the relational database, especially for the data acquisition. The database had to guarantee an easy, fast, and semiautomated entry of thousands of records. Moreover, redundancies and incorrect entries should be avoided. The database had to deal with historical as well as with recent data by simultaneously compensating different format, language, and measuring unit systems of diverse systems (recent metric system and historic “Klafter (Öl)”system). A relational database organizes data in tables. Each table is identified by a unique table name and is organized in rows and columns. Since data are often stored in several tables, those tables can be joined or referenced to each other by common columns (relational fields). These columns often contain identification numbers that act at the same time as primary key [8]. The primary key here is a combination of parcel-ID (including sub-ID resulting from parcels that had been split up previously) and the identification number of each cadastral district, which represents a unique identifier for each test area. The composition of two or more columns guarantees the uniqueness of the primary key. Based on this key, the records are joined to the spatial objects, in particular, parcels in the GIS. FIGURE 20.4 Entity relationship model of project database. owner parcel land use owns has 1 MM1 © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC The Development of the Cross-Border Region of Hungary and Austria 357 20.4.3 S PATIAL D ATA Spatial data (or geographic, topographic, or geo-data) are data which describe phe- nomena directly or indirectly associated with location. Topography can be defined as configuration of a surface, including its relief and the position of natural and human-made features. In addition, geographic features (here: parcels) are character- ized by “topology,” which regards the spatial relationship of objects stored with respect to one another. The spatial data for the project were derived from historical cadastral maps by digitizing. After the preprocessing steps of scanning and geo-referencing the ana- logue maps, each year of interest was digitized, including updates and geometry changes of parcels. Digitizing basis was dependent on the availability of cadastral commonly used desktop GIS. Current cadastre maps are already digitally available. A new approach in storing geographic data related to nonspatial data is the geodatabase model from ESRI ® (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., Redlands, CA). Especially for purposes like the present project, it would be feasible because it facilitates digitizing and editing by implementing topology rules, and it is able to validate features by previously defined integrity rules. The geodatabase model supports an object-oriented vector-data model where entities are represented as objects. An object is a collection of data elements and operations that together are considered as a single entity, which can adopt properties, behavior, and relation- ships [9]. It is a data model where geo-data (and nonspatial data) from several data sources can be unified into one general system. Editing rules, especially splitting or merging policies, are interesting functionalities for the purposes of digitizing parcels. Due to the limited project time, the advantages of this editing and data storage approach could not be tested in its entirety, but it can be suggested as a convenient method for further research in the field of cadastral investigations. 20.4.4 M ODELING THE C ADASTRAL R EALITY In general terms, a model is a representation of reality. In this project it was intended to represent and imitate the reality of land registration in a simplified model in order to reproduce a status quo of property and land for a requested analyses period. Combined with the conceptual database design, the most challenging part of the data acquisition phase was therefore the modeling of the real-world land registry transactions into simplified functions. These “functions” represent the process of registration regarding changes of ownership, land use, as well as parcel size. The first registration of a parcel or owner, the reunion or cancellation of a parcel, the adjustment of area, and many more are examples of such “functions.” By anatomizing each course of registration into its basic elements, the modeling of the real world was simplified, and basic modules were established. The combi- nation of various atomic components resulted in realistic functions, which were part of the database model. Together with the date of change, the feasible function for each action in the land register was stored as an entry in a special table of the database. If more steps (respectively, modules) for one “land registration” were © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC maps (see Figure 20.3). Cadastral data was generated in both countries with a [...]... 360 GIS for Sustainable Development FIGURE 20.7 Land use changes in the Austrian test site; most of the affected arable land changed into forested land (19%) geometry The last two issues were mainly analyzed using a GIS, since in this case the geometric basis was significant For ownership changes it was sufficient to execute queries directly within the database The visualization of the results was performed... Kurzkommentar für die Praxis Land register law: A Comment for Practice, Linde Verlag, 1998 6 Remetey-Fülopp, G., Land Administration in Hungary Institutional support for the implementation of the agricultural, rural development and land tenure policies, FAO SEUR, Budapest, 2001 7 DLM, UN-ECE Documentation of Land Administration Projects Workshop: Customers–Cooperation–Services, Department of Lands and Mapping,... high-resolution geo-referenced aerial hyperspectral data will have a huge impact on archaeology English Heritage’s National Mapping Programme is currently creating a benchmark for aerial photography throughout the United Kingdom [44] Although this is important, as discussed earlier it would be more useful if this information set were © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 376 GIS for Sustainable Development. .. USA, November 1–3, 2001 BAR International Series; 1151 Oxford: Archaeopress, for British Archaeological Reports, 2003 29 Huxhold, W.E and Levinsohn, A.G., Managing Geographic Information System Projects Spatial Information Systems, Oxford: Oxford University Press, New York, 1995 30 Chan, T.O and Williamson, I.P., The different identities of GIS and GIS diffusion, Int J Geogr Inf Sci., 13(3), 267–281, 1999... define “data“ and “information.” Data are the raw material collected, for example, during excavation Information, on the other hand, is derived from data through some form of analysis As such, information transforms data to varying degrees and has an intellectual value defined by analytical goals (see Figure 21.1) Current interest in the complex relationships between theory and practice, particularly on... technological trickle-down effect The first archaeological GIS applications were pioneering; some archaeologists even wrote their own GIS software These pioneers are technologically sophisticated, are prepared to bear the cost and risk of development, and have often fulfilled the role of GIS champion.“ The opportunistic users are relatively more risk averse and take the more robust developments of the... research agendas will be impossible However, since the 1970s, it has been rare for archaeologists to debate recording systems at all [25, although see 36] © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 374 GIS for Sustainable Development This situation must change; approaches need to be developed which can extend the flexibility of databases for recording so that the data can be analyzed with rigor Furthermore, appreciation... definition for “land use” in land administration © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 364 GIS for Sustainable Development It was demonstrated that it is possible to solve the integration of land administration data from different national systems and data covering one century by providing a dedicated relational database In order to analyze the development of land use, property rights, and parcel changes for. ..358 GIS for Sustainable Development Step 4: Entry of new parcel ID Step 3: Entry of new ID of land register Step 2: Cancellation of previous ID of land register Step 1: Cancellation of previous parcel ID Step 1: Cancellation of previous parcel ID Step 1: Cancellation of previous parcel ID FIGURE 20.5 Scheme of modular assembly for the collectivization process in Hungary... recording systems into a computerized format without considering how this data could or should be analyzed (the transformation of data into information) This is akin to creating unintelligent electronic information repositories (or catalogs) rather than using computers as tools designed specifically for analysis and synthesis Although more data are now stored in digital format, accessing these data sets . Hungary is a one-to-many relationship: © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC use,” defined as a one-to-many relationship (Figure 20.4). Basically, the relation 356 GIS for Sustainable Development one. & Francis Group, LLC 350 GIS for Sustainable Development 20.1 INTRODUCTION Many land-use planning decisions ultimately are tied to land ownership and parcels. Therefore, the analyses of past. They were considered as 352 GIS for Sustainable Development FIGURE 20.2 Location of project areas. © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC The Development of the Cross-Border Region of Hungary