Real Estate Property and Cadaster: The Impact of New Mapping Techniques on Land Management and Planning in Greece

Developing a sound land administration system is not a standard recipe to be globally applied. It must take into consideration the country-specific historical, social, economic, technological, and political environment. The Hellenic Cadastral project, initiated in the mid-1990s, comes as an example of a fit-for-purpose land administration system suitable for Greece. A central driver of this effort has been the development of technology in the past 20 years, especially in the mapping sector, which enabled data collection and validation in a transparent and documented manner throughout the country, gaining the acceptance it deserves from Greek society and transforming public administration at large. The widespread use of orthophotomapping technology, coupled with advances in GIS and the Internet, substantially reduced the costs of developing such a system, increased the quality of spatial information available at hand, and enabled all agents involved in the process to operate in a much more robust and effective manner. New ways of collecting, processing, and validating property data were adopted during the development stage of the system, and new modes of interplay interactions were made possible during its operation. This wealth of information is placed in the hands of public authorities for use in urban planning.