Kadaster Bonaire Modernizes Parcel Management

Stichting Kadaster & Hypotheekwezen Bonaire (KBH) manages parcel information of over 13,000 parcels, constituting an area of 68,500 acres, on the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire. KBH's objective is to develop and maintain a stable and effective land registry and cadastre system that provides the security titles to registered properties and land throughout Bonaire. The company also provides access to up-to-date land information to enable confident dealings in property arrangements.

As a regular visitor of the Esri User Conference (Esri UC) and having attended the ArcGIS Pro Parcel Fabric Holistic Testing training session in Redlands, California, in early 2019, KBH was confident that upgrading to ArcGIS Pro would offer a good solution for the company's challenges.

Since 2010, KBH has used ArcGIS to develop and manage the company's parcel network. KBH wanted to improve its parcel data accuracy and its workflow for importing survey data into the parcel fabric. In the past, parcel points were converted from KBH's CAD system to a table and then imported into the ArcMap parcel fabric before staff drew the updated parcels.

Parcel fabric data users were only able to view snapshots of the data in ArcGIS Online by exporting and publishing the Parcel Fabric feature classes periodically. New edits in the parcel fabric were only visible after each export, causing many users to work with outdated data.

Drafting extractions from the cadastral plan was done by hand. After localizing the paper cadastral maps, the parcels were traced on a paper layout for the customers, adding unnecessary time and work.

GIS4C has been the authorized Esri distributor for Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Saint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten since 2006. As a distributor, GIS4C serves about a hundred customers across the six Dutch Caribbean islands. Customers include utility companies, national statistical offices, various governmental departments, and land records agencies. With its staff's expertise, GIS4C provides high-quality spatial solutions by implementing ArcGIS in organizations, offering training opportunities, and delivering professional services. KBH asked GIS4C for its help in upgrading to the parcel fabric in ArcGIS Pro.

GIS4C helped KBH upgrade to ArcGIS Enterprise 10.7.1 to provide the services-based architecture needed for sharing the parcel fabric across all platforms (desktop, mobile, and web). Part of the upgrade was to set up an ArcGIS Enterprise organizational account for KBH. After the upgrade, GIS4C provided training to migrate KBH's parcel fabric from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro. GIS4C and KBH established updated and improved workflows to edit and manage the parcel fabric in ArcGIS Pro 2.4. This enabled KBH personnel to start realizing all the benefits ArcGIS Pro delivers.

To automate the drawing of extractions from the cadastral plan, an ArcGIS Pro task was created. This delivered efficiencies by standardizing, simplifying, and automating portions of this workflow.

The parcel data was then integrated with the KBH mortgage database, which includes information on mortgages, parcel ownership, and legal descriptions of the lots; this step enabled parcel query. This information was shared in the enterprise portal via several web maps and apps. Together with other topographical layers shared via the portal, this content was made available for use on smart devices. Another important requirement for KBH was storing and querying parcel history, which is automatically maintained in the ArcGIS Pro parcel fabric.

"Not only has KBH established more efficient parcel management workflows in ArcGIS Pro, KBH employees are now also able to access accurate land records data anytime, anywhere, and on any device", said Eric Sussenbach, managing director for GIS4C. Workers can now consult the parcel fabric while conducting surveys in the field. Likewise, the managing staff can consult parcel data and related mortgage information when needed. 

Office workers are now able to drag CAD drawings directly into ArcGIS Pro and build new parcels from CAD lines, making this workflow less time-consuming and much more efficient than the former workflow.

With the ArcGIS Pro task to create and print extractions from the cadastral plan for KBH customers, the process of locating the paper maps and drawing the extraction by hand has been made obsolete, saving time. Now, by entering the parcel number and following the task steps, an up-to-date extraction is produced in printed or digital format with just a few mouse clicks.

Currently KBH is enabling a workflow to import field GNSS points directly into the parcel fabric. The points are imported from a simple text file with x,y coordinates and z-coordinates and feature-level metadata. The operator will be able to review the imported points on the map in 2D and 3D and decide which points will be used and managed in the parcel fabric. This will improve the spatial accuracy of the surveyed parcels as well as surrounding parcels.

For more information on how to modernize your land registry and cadastre system using geographic information system (GIS) technology, visit go.esri.com/kbh-parcels.