3rd Croatian Congress on Cadastre and 2nd INTERGEO EAST gathers about 800 participantsZagreb, Croatia, March 7-9, 2005
The 3rd Croatian Congress on Cadastre with international participation was held at the Congress Center of the Zagreb Fair in Zagreb, Croatia from 7 to 9 March 2005. The conference was held in conjunction with the 2nd INTERGEO EAST, an international fair of geodesy, land management and geoinformation, which took place in hall 5 of the Zagreb Fair. FIG Deputy President Dr. Andreas Drees was invited to address the participants of the congress on behalf of Prof. Dr. Holger Magel, FIG President, who was not able to join. Dr. Drees gave a keynote presentation in the first session as well. The congress was held at a time, when the Republic of Croatia is facing the conditions of European Union. One of the tasks that should be fulfilled before Croatia joins the Union, is the reform of cadastre and land registry. Croatia approaches the problem with great care: laws about state survey, real estate cadastre, land registry and property rights have already been passed. Within the program of state survey and real estate cadastre for the period 2001 - 2005 the first phase of real estate cadastre, establishment of basic geodetic networks and multipurpose spatial information systems have been finished. The establishment of land data base started the process of renewal of land registry. It was the aim of the organizers of the conference, the Croatian Geodetic Society (CGS), to attract national, regional and European professionals in fields of cadastre, geoinformatics and land management to attend and provide their experience and proposals for acceleration of the program realization. This goal was well achieved when about 800 participants assembled at the opening ceremony, coming from Croatia, the neighbouring states, whole East Europe and Western Europe as well. Petar Micolic, President of CGS opened the Congress and highlighted the aims of the event. After having two Congresses on Cadastre and several other meetings on this topic with good results, he pointed out as the main problem, that the actions of politicians have not been that strong as expected. Two ministers of Croatia, Minister of Justice and Minister of Agriculture, attended the congress and expressed that they will help with building the necessary legal framework. Hopefully they will do. It was obvious from the following keynotes from Croatia, that there is especially need for urban and rural land consolidation laws. It is not enough to survey the whole country in the best manner and within short time spending more than 200 million € from the World Bank and providing only little or no help with appropriate land management services. The keynote from FIG representative Dr. Drees gave an overview on current activities of FIG in the period 2003-2006. He stressed especially the contributions surveyors can deliver besides the classical technical services. This was also a main topic during his short visit of the Geodetic Faculty of the Zagreb University, where he met with several professors and with the Dean of the Faculty with whom he discussed the necessary broad curriculum following the current FIG definition of a surveyor. A very important meeting of representatives from many of the neighbouring countries was organized during the congress as well. This round table was attended by the World Bank, FIG, CELK, Eurogeographics, GTZ, UN WPLA representatives as well as others. Under the chairmanship of Prof. Dr. Zeljko Bacic the round table discussed the different experiences that the East European countries have made in developing cadastral and land registry systems. A final documentation of this discussion would help as a contribution to the individual states and also to get FIG Commissions involved as well. Congratulation to CGS and the Scientific Board under Prof. Damir Medak who had organized a really interesting congress that included 8 technical sessions:
The proceedings have been printed and are available through CGS (unfortunately many of the presentations are only available in Croatian language). INTERGEO EAST attracted a lot of surveyors and offered a slightly larger fair than the first INTERGEO EAST in Belgrade last year. This show seems to develop to an annual event for East Europe. Andreas Drees
March 13, 2005 |
