A lineage metadata model for the temporal management of a cadastre application

Nowadays one of the most successful applications of GIS is the management of a land-use cadastre. A lot of corporate GIS databases are in development, they support the legal management and distribution of cadastral maps. However, the management of the propagation of geographical updates toward relevant user databases is still a methodological and technical problem to address in the context of a corporate application. This paper proposes a lineage metadata model that supports the management of geographical changes in the context of a corporate cadastre application. Geographical changes are identified from an analysis of the French cadastre which acts as a case study for the development of our model. The lineage metadata model is based on the application of a filiation tree that permits the management of the evolution of geographical objects and the generation of historical queries. The proposed model is specified and validated with the O/sub 2/ object-oriented database.