A NR SRE SE RET
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At present,
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—
In the meantime, however, there occured an extension in the scope of cadastral work and a
shift in the relative importance of various attributes of cadastre: from a prevalent fiscal-juridical
system the centre of gravity mcved toward a general; dynamic. land information system, which in
“idition to defining land properties anc their value, could be used for the acministration of the
‘’:\try and the planning of its future development. A speedy compliance with these require-
ments is a matter of livelihood for developing countries. :
All countries — but | would like to particularly stress developing countries — must know who
owns the land, how the land is used and whether or not the taxes are duly paid. Therefore, they
must operate some land record system; which we may call cadastre to symplify the matter. Such
systems are maintained with a great outlay of money and energy, but they are seldom operational,
providing complete and up-to-date information when needed. This is because old-fashioned con-
cepts not tailored to present needs, are still used within the systems and the “land surveyors’
wrongly afraid of loosing their livelihood, oppose the use of photogrammetry, the only technique
capable of solving expeditiously the world-wide cadastral problems outside of cities and densely
built-up areas.
By solving the problem of cadastre, a Lasis would be provided for a general land information
system with pertinent, modern maps with most of the required data obtained from a single,
integrated and coherent operation. The present, wasteful fragmentation of the effort in national
surveying and mapping programs with continous duplications would be eliminated and the land
surveyor would regain the prestige he commanded in the remote past.
Role of Commission Vl in Promoting a Progressive Professional Attitude
This discussion centres on a very important aspect of our discipline and profession. The impli-
cations are much wider than those which can be discussed in a short paper. The geodetic discip-
lines of which surveying and mapping constitute the main activities have a most venerable tradi-
tion. In ancient times, together with astronomy, geodesy directed the human mind toward the
search for truth and scientific endeavours. However, as time passed, the surveyor lost his vision
and became one of the many handymen offering his services to society. The overwhelming inven-
tion and development of photogrammetry was met by the surveyor with mistrust and negation,
and to safeguard his livelihood, he entrenched his position with a number of concepts and beliefs,
which had some justification at the time they were formulated, but became obsolete and at pre-
sent bar the way to progress and evolution within the profession. One of them is an excessive
and unnecessary importance ascribed to the_re/ative accuracy in property boundaries determina-
tion in open country to the detriment of other presently more important attributes of various
land survey systems thereby disregarding the overriding interest in_absolute accuracy of geometric
data. Because of this alone, it is difficult to implement meaningful integration in the field. Many
countries remain unmapped and only very few can claim any dynamic land information systems
that satisfy present-day needs. This does not enhance the image of the surveying profession as
compared to other engineering professions. Thus the defense tactic chosen by surveyors in many
countries is selfdefeating.
