In 1992, the Quebec Government (Canada) launched the Cadastral Reform Program. The program will cost about $ 500 million and will provide the Government (Ministry of Natural Ressources) with a digital cadastral database of 4 million parcels. Over 13 years, 1500 contracts will be awarded to private land surveyors for cadastre renewal and for mapping and geodetic work.
As part of the project, DMR Group inc. was awarded a $ 27 million systems integration contract to develop and operate information systems for cadastral reform to be used by over 200 internal users. This project is the biggest civil Geomatics contract to be carried out in Canada; it represents more than 220 person-years of effort over five years. DMR is responsible for the integration of hardware, software and services (work engineering, systems development, implementation, training, support and operation). DMR has brought together several companies (including Digital Equipment, Esri and Oracle) to supply products and resources, or provide supplementary expertise.
The most GIS intensive applications developped include:
(1) Management of Cadastral Reform Program: planning, awarding and managing cadastre renewal contracts (using existing digital maps as a basis) ; and
(2) Management of Cadastral Data: supporting data input (in a normalized GIS format), quality control, data integration, data updating through digital transactions coming from private land surveyors, maps/files production for client use.
This paper presents an overview of the project and focusses on the use of GIS technology (ArcInfo) to
(1) plan and manage a major project and
(2) manage and control legal cadastral data. It also adresses the issue of GIS data exchange with several hundred external agencies.