GIS in Land and Property Management

Martin P. Ralphs, Peter Wyatt

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134550937
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Economists, geographers and surveyors are beginning to recognise the powerful tool which a Geographical Information System (GIS) offers in effective property management. It provides a means of managing land and property information digitally and in a geographical context, and allows for rapid access to information and a means of analyzing that information in a geographical context.
GIS in Land and Property Management shows how to use GIS, both in principle and in practice. It introduces digital mapping and GIS, along with a brief history of the development of GIS and LIS, all with an emphasis on property. In presenting the spectrum of GIS applications in property management it gives a number of case studies from a variety of market sectors, and it analyzes the issues to provide guidance and a number of recommendations for the implementation of GIS. At the same time common themes and issues are drawn out to present a coherent message for students and practitioners.
The book is useful for undergraduate and postgraduate students on land management, built environment, economics and geography courses, and for property professionals, in both public and private sectors, looking to GIS as a property management decision aid.

Part I

Geographical Information Systems

1 Setting the scene

Introduction

A primary goal of the study of geography is to try and increase our understanding of the world. One of the most important facilities in the scientific toolkit of the geographer is the ability to collect, synthesise, analyse and visualise data. Through the exploration of data we can test our theoretical understanding or apply existing knowledge in specific cases to try and make well-informed decisions about the management and use of limited natural and socio-economic resources.

This book is about geography. More specifically, it is about how modern techniques based largely around the use of computer systems for information processing can be brought to bear on one particular aspect of geography: the management of land and property resources. This area of activity has been central to human society since the development of permanent settlements. Records of land and property information can be found on the clay tablet maps of the early civilisations of the Indus Valley, Sumeria and Mesopotamia. The Egyptians used large-scale mapping for resource management on the Nile flood plain. Later, the Romans created large-scale maps of land ownership based on the measurement of distances and angles (Dorling and Fairbairn, 1997) while the masters of feudal Europe created complex inventories of rights over land resources, the most famous being the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror.

In the twenty-first century we have access to more information about land and property than ever before. Space-borne satellite sensor platforms collect enormous volumes of information on a daily basis at ever increasing levels of detail describing the land cover of our planet. National governments hold computerised databases of land inventory information and commercial data suppliers provide wide-ranging information resources about land value and land use. Employing this information effectively and maximising its benefits are vital to the successful future development of our society.

Computerised approaches to geographical exploration, sometimes referred to as ‘automated geography’ (DeMers, 2000) can be brought to bear to assist those who need to maximise the benefits of modern property information resources. Part I of this book is an introduction to computerised approaches to the processing of information about land and property, with particular focus on the core technology of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and the capabilities of these systems in handling, analysing and visualising land and property information.

It is timely for property professionals in the UK to increase their awareness of the opportunities that GIS can offer. The property sector now regards information as a critical corporate resource and managing and analysing this resource has become a high priority. The application of GIS technology to the management and analysis of property information brings forward numerous opportunities. Databases of property information can be created to which access is sold; new analytical skills can be learnt to meet the changing demands of clients and new business opportunities – made possible by technology and information access – can be sought.

There are already numerous introductory texts of good quality available about the technologies and capabilities of GIS and it is not our purpose in this book to reinvent the wheel by presenting broadly similar material. Instead, we have sought to summarise the basics of the technology and its capabilities in this first part and in the later parts to present more detail about the specific relevance of GIS methods to the application area of land and property management.

Definitions and key terminology

We begin our exploration by introducing and discussing some of the fundamental terms that we will be using throughout this book and providing some background on these concepts.

Land and property

‘Land’ refers to the physical resource represented by the surface of the earth. For human beings, land is a fundamental resource that is essential for all of the activities that we perform. A useful definition is provided by Dale and McLaughlin (1988) who consider that land ‘encompasses all those things directly associated with the surface of the earth, including those areas covered by water. It includes a myriad of physical and abstract attributes from the right to light or build upon the land to ground water and minerals and the rights to use and exploit them’.

In economic terms, land is a factor of production. Land has utility, which might be the growing of crops, the grazing of livestock or the extraction of minerals. Such utility may be enhanced by constructing buildings that allow the environment to be adapted for other uses such as living accommodation, the manufacture and sale of goods or the provision of services. The term ‘property’ or ‘real estate’ refers to the combination of land and buildings. Hence ‘property management’ can be defined as the set of activities whereby land resources are put to good effect and includes the following processes:

• conveyancing, that is, the transfer of an interest in property from one owner to another;

• valuation, that is an estimate of the financial worth of an interest in property to a particular person for a specific purpose;

• development or redevelopment of property;

• management and maintenance of property;

• formation and implementation of land use planning policies and the monitoring of land use;

• environmental assessment and environmental impact analysis.

The process of land management is predicated upon the subdivision of the land into manageable regions or units. This subdivision can be based on many criteria including rights of use or ownership, planning controls or government policy and requires that we introduce a new entity: the land parcel. A land parcel can be defined simply as a unit of land and the processes of land management are usually concerned with individual land parcels or groups of parcels.

Data and information

There is often considerable confusion about the use of these two terms, and indeed the difference in the meanings that they convey is quite subtle. Let us begin by considering the term ‘data’. We can define data simply as ‘records of facts’ following the pragmatic suggestion of Larner (1996). To take an example, the layout plan of a housing estate is a set of data. Individual data items associated with this example might be the pair of X and Y co-ordinates that define the geographical position of the corner of a building or the name of the owner of the land on which the estate is constructed.

By themselves, data are inert. For example, data may simply be the encoding of records of facts. In order for data to become ‘information’, we need to assimilate, understand or interpret them in some fashion. To achieve this we may need to classify or organise the data in order to convey meaning. By analysing the data the user extracts the meaning (or an interpretation of the meaning) and obtains information.

Geographical information

We can define geographical information as information that carries some form of geographical or ‘spatial’ reference allowing us to pinpoint its location in some fashion. Spatial references tend to fall into one of two categories that we will call numeric and symbolic references. A numeric or direct spatial reference uses a co-ordinate system, usually in conjunction with a mathematical model called a map projection, to position objects precisely in space. Examples of such systems include geographical co-ordinates (latitude and longitude) and the Ordnance Survey’s (OS) National Grid of Great Britain.

Symbolic or descriptive spatial references use less precise methods to locate the object, but can still provide useful information. Examples, in decreasing order of exactness, might be:

• A postcode such as WC1 1AA.

• A postal address such as ‘15 Acacia Avenue, Bromley, South London’.

• A written description such as ‘next to London Bridge’.

It is often cited that approximately 70 per cent of the data held by local and regional governments and private sector organisations are geographically referenced in some way. By capitalising on this fact and bringing computer analysis techniques to bear on our geographically referenced information we can maximise their usefulness.

Property information

We can define property information as information that describes the characteristics of a defined unit of property such as a land parcel or a building. Examples of property information might be the floor space of an industrial property, the leasing arrangements on a commercial office or the price paid for a house. Usually, a property will have a range of descriptive characteristics that are of interest.

Information systems

It is increasingly recognised that high quality information is a critical resource for the effective strategic functioning of organisations. This recognition is the result of our increased awareness of evolving technology and its potential to revolutionise information handling. The role and significance of information resources has not changed, but what was missing before was the existence of a mature Information and Communication Technology (ICT) that was able to manage and manipulate it. Miller (1956) has shown that humans are able to process between five and nine ‘chunks’ of information at any one time – recall the difficulties that we experience when trying to remember ten and eleven digit phone numbers or numerous computer passwords. Computers and appropriate software are capable of handling substantially more pieces of information in a fraction of the time. The problem has become one of interaction with the computer in order to retrieve this information quickly and efficiently.

Developments in ICT, much of which barely existed or was prohibitively expensive twenty-five years ago, have been rapid and continuous in the last decade. Since its first business application in the mid-fifties, the use of computer technology has expanded dramatically. The picture confronting us is constantly evolving and few weeks go by without the announcement of new products, major technological advances, improved cost performance ratios and myriad allied services. Fired by parallel developments in marketing techniques, the typical business is being bombarded by a host of technologies, many of which bear the most inscrutable names, mnemonics or just plain numbers that convey little or nothing to the uninitiated. Similarly, the range of activities to which computers and cognate technologies can be applied is vast and there are few aspects of the working and leisure lives of the individual which are not influenced in some measure by ICT.

The ‘revolution’ in ICT has been the subject of numerous publications and the topic of many conferences and seminars. Assertions about the perva...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Part 1 Geographical Information Systems
• Part 2 GIS applications in land and property management
• Part 3 GIS issues in land and property management
• Glossary
• Index