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Geoinformatics

The Estonian Land Board (ELB) is taking the lead in implementing the national land policy and providing the community with geospatial data. The ELB is responsible for developing the Estonian National Land Information System (LIS) that forms a foundation to the Estonian National Spatial Data Infrastructure. Geoinformatics is one of the ELB´s core activities, providing support to the ELB's other activities like land cadastre, cartography, geology, geodesy, etc and also dealing with GIS related activities at state and municipality levels. The importance of geoinformatics has rapidly grown at the ELB during last years, as it has in the whole world. Geoinformatics has moved more and more closer into mainstream information technology (IT) and it is hard to draw a clear line between GI technology and information technology. Therefore the development process of (geo)information systems at the ELB is conducted in close co-operation between two departments - Department of Information Technology and Department of Geoinformatics.

1. Centralized data holding. Seamless databases. Moving away from sheet and file based data holdings;
2. Integrated alphanumerical and spatial data handling;
3. Implementing Open Geospatial Consortium standards and using OGC compatible software products and solutions.

The year 2001 can be considered a major milestone in the development process of (geo)information systems at the Estonian Land Board. The Cadastral Information System (CIS) became fully functional at the end of that year. The first web map application was published for serving cadastral data and topographic maps for the public.

As a result of the project called "Models of Spatial Data", the reality model for the Estonian National Topographic Database (ENTD) was created. The Estonian National Topographic Database (ENTD) together with CIS forms a basis for the National Land Information System.

In 2002 new development projects were initiated. The main goal was to develop cadastral restrictions (servitutes) registration and managing subsystem (RIS) under CIS and Public Service System that is basically a web map server for making cadastral data and topographic maps available to the public. ENTD data model and unified spatial data classifier that was implemented in restrictions database and also in ENTD were created.

In 2003 the development and implementation of new public and specific services using Public Services System tools were continued. Pilot projects for re-engineering and migrating the Estonian Basic Map digital data into ENTD were initiated.

In 2004 the State Register of Mineral Deposits was developed. New targeted e-services were created for local municipalities and notaries, spatial data re-engineering works were continued.

In 2005 a software solution for supporting topographic data and map production workflow for the Estonian National Topographic Database was chosen and two significant projects related to OGC standards were initiated: