Sustainable Management of Aquatic Spaces Under Federal Domain: a Modeling Proposal Based on LADM

Résumé

The management of public lands and waters plays a strategic role in promoting sustainable development and the preservation of natural resources. In Brazil, this challenge is manifested in a complex manner within the administration of federal assets, particularly those considered public goods for common use, such as federal public waters. Responsibility for this management lies with the Secretariat for Federal Assets (Secretaria do Patrimônio da União – SPU), an agency under the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services, which is tasked with regulating the use and ensuring the patrimonial control of Union assets, including water bodies under federal domain. Among the instruments available to operationalize this management, the granting of physical spaces in public waters stands out. This mechanism allows the Union, through technical, legal, and environmental criteria, to authorize the use of specific water areas by public or private entities. The purposes of these grants are varied, ranging from the installation of floating structures, such as marinas and piers, to the implementation of economic, tourism, environmental, or scientific research activities. The granting process involves complex stages, including multidisciplinary analyses, issuance of technical opinions, and formal contractual arrangements, demanding a robust and interoperable administrative structure. However, the increasing demand for regulated use of aquatic spaces highlights the limitations of traditional management models, particularly regarding system integration, data standardization, and procedural efficiency. The absence of a unified approach to represent the legal and spatial relationships governing such grants undermines SPU’s capacity for planning, oversight, and interinstitutional coordination. In this context, the adoption of the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) is proposed as a conceptual reference for modeling data and processes related to the granting of aquatic spaces under federal domain. The LADM, standardized by ISO 19152, was originally designed to standardize the representation of information in land administration systems by structuring the relationships among stakeholders (parties), rights, restrictions and responsibilities (RRRs), spatial units, and legal sources. Its primary objective is to promote interoperability among different systems and ensure semantic consistency in territorial managementhere.