Cadastre

Napoleon established a comprehensive cadastral system for France that is regarded as the forerunner of most modern versions.

Such systems are also employed on a variety of other tasks, for example, to track long-term changes over time for geological or ecological studies, where land tenure is a significant part of the scenario.

[2] By clearly assigning property rights and demarcating land, cadasters have been attributed with strengthening state fiscal capacity and economic growth.

[5] A cadastre commonly includes details of the ownership, the tenure, the precise location, the dimensions (and area), the cultivations if rural, and the value of individual parcels of land.

One such cadastre was done in AD 77 in Campania, a surviving stone marker of the survey reads "The Emperor Vespasian, in the eighth year of his tribunician power, so as to restore the state lands which the Emperor Augustus had given to the soldiers of Legion II Gallica, but which for some years had been occupied by private individuals, ordered a survey map to be set up with a record on each 'century' of the annual rental".

Only in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries did the use of cadastral maps resume, beginning in the Netherlands.

With the emergence of capitalism in Renaissance Europe, the need for cadastral maps reemerged as a tool to determine and express control of land as a means of production.

This took place first privately in land disputes and later spread to governmental practice as a means of more precise tax assessment.

In a Danish textbook, one out of fifteen chapters regards the form and content of documents concerning subdivision and other land matters.

[18] In Australia, similar activities are referred to as 'lodgement of plans of subdivision at land titles offices' [19] Cadastre management has been used by the software industry since at least 2005.

[16] In 1836, Colonel Robert Dawson of the Royal Engineers proposed that a cadastre be implemented in light of his experiences as on secondment to the Tithe Commission.

Some much earlier surveys in Ohio created 25 square mile townships when the design of the system was being explored.

Properties are generally rectangular, boundary lines often run on cardinal bearings, and parcel dimensions are often in fractions or multiples of chains.