The Centre provides a focus for research in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) and Land Administration by building on research relationships and creating new links through national and international collaboration. The Department of Infrastructure Engineering through the centre has been undertaking research in Land Administration Systems (LAS), and Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI), for decades,
particularly to pioneer ways of supporting sustainability of land uses and alleviation of poverty. Land Administration Systems (LAS)
Land administration is the process of administering the complex rights, restrictions, responsibilities and (increasingly) risks related to land and its use. Growing demands of land markets and government policy initiatives stimulated evolution of LAS into statewide land information systems concerned with all private and public rights, restrictions and responsibilities including land use and land valuation components. In Victoria the State's land administration system is administered through the Department of Sustainability and Environment, a department with a longstanding and close working relationship throught the centre to the Department of Geomatics. Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI)
Spatial Data Infrastructures are an evolving concept providing the spatial or geographic base underpinning a state's or a country's economic, environmental and social activities. Now SDIs involve a complex digital environment including a wide range of spatial data bases and are concerned with standards, institutional structures and technologies including the World Wide Web (WWW) and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Spatial Data Infrastructures underpin an information society and enable a society to become spatially enabled. They are an essential part of eGovernment strategies, and key to provision of timely and relevant information about land to the public, business and government. Formative activities include -
The UN/FIG Bogor Declaration on Cadastral Reform in 1996. The International Workshop and Conference on Cadastral Infrastructures to Support Sustainable Development in 1999. The Workshop was supported by and attracted participation from State and Federal governments in Australia , five United Nations agencies including the Director of Sustainable Development in New York , as well as the World Bank. The UN/FIG Bathurst Declaration on Land Administration for Sustainable Development in 1999. The Declaration was presented to and endorsed by United Nations conferences in New York and Malaysia . Increased interest in spatial data and land administration infrastructures at State and Federal levels in Australia and internationally resulted in the establishment of the Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructure and Land Administration in the Department of Geomatics in 2001. Our research includes best practices in land administration, the SDI hierarchy, capacity building, marine environment spatial data and administration, decision support systems, evolution of land markets and tenure systems, and servicing of the complex commodities retailed in modern property markets.
