Registration of 3D Objects Crossing Parcel Boundaries

SUMMARY Property rights on real estate are registered on cadastral parcels. These parcels are the result of a delimitation of the earth by boundaries projected on the surface. Dutch law allows the division of ownership of buildings and land in horizontal layers by establishing a right of superficies ( opstalrecht). The result is a horizontal subdivision by reference to depths or horizons, within one parcel. In this paper we will elaborate on the way the Netherlands’ Kadaster deals with horizontal division of ownership especially in case a construction intersects with several parcels (crossboundary object) and the limitations of the actual registration in 2D. Three cases (a railway tunnel in urban area, two utility pipelines, and a drilled tunnel in rural area) are used to illustrate this. On the basis of the last of these cases, two alternatives will be described to register crossboundary objects in the cadastral DBMS. For the midterm future the concept of 3D right-objects, introduced in the research ‘3D cadastre’ (Stoter et al., 2002), can be a way to improve the current way of registration (Stoter and Ploeger, 2002), although ‘gaps’ (cases where the location of the construction in 2D and 3D is not known) may still occur. Therefore the registration of the legal space of crossboundary objects is a better solution for the long-term future.