Legal atlas: access to legal sources through maps

The Leibniz Center for Law is involved in the project DURP (Digital exchange of spatial plans) which develops an XML-based digital exchange format for spatial regulations. Involvement in the DURP project offers new possibilities to test the feasibility of a machine readable regulative framework related to an object oriented representation of the real world such as the zoning plan. This marriage enables access to legal source through maps and vice versa. The combination supports increased transparency and delivery. We describe the combined architecture of the MetaLex XML schema for 'regular' legal sources that we developed in the past with geospatial regulatory information. We have developed a prototype viewer application and demonstrate how the spatial planning information in GML can be combined with MetaLex XML using the Web Ontology Language OWL.