Applying LADM for Brazilian Rural Cadastre – a prototype and partial results
Palavras-chave:
Cadastre, LADM, Informal Rights, Crowdsourcing, Land Administration, Brazil, Fit for PurposeResumo
Brazil has vast natural resources and is a global leader in farming, yet its land administration system still has significant room for development. Since 2013, the georeferenced rural cadastre (SIGEF), which integrates with the Land Registry, has made significant progress. However, this system focuses primarily on formal property rights, failing to capture Brazil’s complex agrarian landscape, which is marked by diverse possessory rights, high levels of informality, and rapid changes in land use and tenure. This article presents a project underway to enhance this existing platform by implementing the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) – ISO 19152:2012. The LADM-based model is designed to represent a wide variety of tenure situations, both formal and informal, including individual properties and traditional collective territories. Furthermore, the model addresses an ambiguity in Brazilian law between the "property unit" (from the Land Registry) and the agrarian concept of the "Rural Immovable" (based on possession and land use). By using LADM’s three fundamental elements — parties (Party), rights (RRR), and parcels (Spatial Unit) — the project tries to configure rural immovables by linking adjacent parcels of the same party, considering both formal and informal rights that result in direct possession. Pilot studies were conducted in four distinct municipalities. Data were collected from three main sources: SIGEF (Georeferenced Cadastre System), CAR (Rural Environmental Cadastre) and SNCR (National Rural Cadastre System). The final goal is to develop an accessible and functional prototype that allows users to resolve ambiguities, clearly identifying formal components of an immovable alongside informal parcels and traditional occupations. This solution aims to pave the way for the implementation of a comprehensive cadastre for Brazil, which will support conflict resolution, sustainable land use, economic development, and social equity with environmental control.
