In digital form, half of the Czech cadastres are already available

Prague - Digital cadastral maps now cover more than half of the territory of the Czech Republic. Employees of the Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre (ČÚZK) managed to increase the number of digital maps by about nine percent year-on-year last year. However, government savings measures will slow the pace of digitization. This was revealed to ČTK from the newly published annual report of ČÚZK for 2010.
"Due to the austerity measures, it is no longer possible to further increase the pace of digitization; therefore, in the coming years, digitization of cadastral maps will continue at the current pace with reduced capacities, and its complete completion will be postponed by approximately 1.5 years due to the savings measures," stated the chairman of the office, Karel Večeře, in the annual report. The entire digitization is expected to be completed in 2017.
     By the end of last year, 6,845 cadastral areas were in digital form, which is approximately 53 percent of all areas. There are a total of 13,027 cadastral areas in the Czech Republic. The rest of the Czech Republic is currently covered only by scanned cadastral maps, which, compared to digital maps, do not allow the current status of the cadastre to be displayed online.
     Last year, digitization focused mainly on cadastral maps in urban areas and larger municipalities. According to the annual report, there are often better-quality materials available there, more transactions are taking place in the real estate market, and development projects are being realized.
     In 2010, the ČÚZK, in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Defence, also carried out the first part of the project to acquire a new elevation model of the Czech Republic. Data from more than one-third of the country's territory were obtained using aerial laser scanning of the Earth's surface. This has created an accurate fourth-generation terrain model. "The entire territory will be covered by this terrain model in 2012, and the resulting products will serve, among other things, the needs of national defense and flood protection," said ČÚZK head Večeře.

Development of digitization of cadastral areas in the Czech Republic:

Year	Total number of cadastral areas in digital form	Share of total number
until 2000	1988	15.3 %
2001	2428	18.6 %
2002	2881	22.1 %
2003	3424	26.3 %
2004	3807	29.2 %
2005	4121	31.6 %
2006	4400	33.8 %
2007	4663	35.8 %
2008	4976	38.2 %
2009	5739	44.1 %
2010	6845	52.5 %

Source: annual report of ČÚZK for 2010