The Cadastre of Public-Law Restrictions on Landownership (PLR Cadastre) in Switzerland
Martine Besse
Owning land, in Switzerland and in many other countries, does not mean we can use it as we
want. Landowners are subject to various laws, ordinances and regulations established by the
competent authorities: the public-law restrictions on landownership. These restrictions, which
are around 150 in Switzerland, come from various departments. This spread of the information
leads to a loss of time, a risk of forgetting, but above all, a lack of legal safety. These aspects
had initially been discussed in the publication of “Cadastre 2014” in 1998 by the FIG. As an
answer to this problem, it has been decided to create the Cadastre of Public-law Restrictions on
landownership (PLR Cadastre). It is an official information system which gathers the most
important restrictions on landownership at one place. The process is the following: visiting an
official geo-portal and getting dynamic information on whole areas with the possibility to
choose which restrictions to display, or getting a static extract as a PDF file summarizing the
elements concerning the plot of land considered. But what really separates the PLR Cadastre
from classical geo-portals, is the fact that the information is completed by the legal provisions
and legal bases which are sources to the restriction.
The project started in 2012 and today, beginning of 2021, the PLR Cadastre is available on
almost the whole territory of Switzerland (24 cantons out of 26). The implementation had to
face several challenges. One of these is the fact that the public-law restrictions are composed
of various elements, like geodata or texts, and come from different sources under the
responsibility of various professional bodies. It was mandatory to be able to standardize the
data, and this has been possible thanks to the framework model and the minimum data models.
The project is still young and will be subject to improvement. A concrete return on investment
is hard to make, nonetheless, benefits have already been witnessed. The different users of the
cadastre, either professional or individual, confirmed the necessity of the PLR Cadastre and
have observed time savings. The use of the tool is constantly increasing throughout the country
and is now essential for all the operators who work with the landowner property.
Event: FIG e-Working Week 2021
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