DISCLAIMER: The data used to demonstrate a building permit application is entirely fake. No personally identifiable information is available in these datasets.
Project Background
Land administration requires access to data from various sources to fulfil various use cases. To support the retrieval of information for these use cases, it has been proposed that a portal be developed to integrate land administration information. The integration of this information is based on the implementation of the Land Administration Domain Model (ISO19152) as an ontology. The ontology is available here and the integrated dataset is available here. The development of the ontology was done as part of a student project with the TU Delft and continues as a research and development project.
One of the use cases for the development of a standards-based portal for integrated land administration information is the application of a building permit. In the Netherlands, several steps are included in this process and require the retrieval of information from multiple, distributed sources, both open data sources and closed or paid data sources. This is well regulated in the Netherlands and the relevant parties are already able to access and make use of the information in these sources. An integrated data source improves the efficiency with which information can be accessed by users. Indeed, only two information points are now required from the user in the below demonstrator, the address and the bsn associated with a given building plan application. With this information, spatial plan, law restrictions, personal records and cadastral information can all be retrieved based on a number of easily defined SPARQL queries. Previously, this would have required access to several data sources, each with a complex model and different retrieval mechanisms.
This data story demonstrates the retrieval of data at different stages of the process flow. This is done by querying the information now integrated using the LADM ontology based on a set of questions which are relevant to users of the portal at various stages of the process flow.
Demonstrator Notes:
- The data available in this demonstrator only has the spatial scope of Almere and Zeewolde.
- To test the demonstrator, the following address information can be used as input:
Example 1:
- Name: Wilhelmina Kracht
- BSN: 99473114
- Address: Forum 63, 1315TG, Almere
Example 2:
- Name: Evert Schults
- BSN: 3323109
- Address: Pluvierenweg 9, 3898LL, Zeewolde
1. Preliminary Phase
During the preliminary phase, a building plan is submitted and this initiates a building permit application. There are several steps to this application as outlined in the following figure.
Figure 1. Building permit application
In this process flow, only one source of information is required, namely; the Spatial Plans dataset for the Netherlands. Here, the building plan submitted by the applicant is checked against the spatial plans for a given location to assess whether the building plan is under the spatial plan. If not, a building permit needs to be requested. If a permit is requested, this initiates the subsequent phase described in this story.
Spatial Plan Information
The first step in this process flow is not demonstrated here, it is simply assumed for demonstration purposes that a permit is required. Upon notification that a building permit is, indeed, required, the compliance of the building plan to the spatial plan is checked. The following question is asked:
- What spatial plan(s) are attached to the specific address associated with a building plan?
The queries below uses the portal to answer this question. In the first query, the results of the query is returned as a table and in the second query, these results of placed on a map. The input parameters allow the user of this portal to simply fill in the address information associated with a building plan and, when executed, retrieve a (list of) spatial plan(s) associated with this address.
Technical Note: By clicking on the 'try this query yourself' button, it is possible to see the underlying query defined to support the answering of this question. This a SPARQL query; the native query language used to retrieve information from linked data sources. The query parameters defined for this SPARQL query, the address information, makes it possible for the user of the land administration portal to simply input address information and return this information in a table without having knowledge of SPARQL.
The following query visualises the same results as the above query but on a map interface. By clicking on the geometry shown, it is possible to see the specific spatial plan document associated with this geometry.
Following the identification of a spatial plan and retrieving this information, the applicant of the building permit needs to assess the information in the spatial plan to answer the following question:
- Is the building plan in compliance with the spatial plan(s)?
This cannot be done based on a simple SPARQL query because it requires specialist knowledge and is not demonstrated here. The information required to carry out this assessment, however, is included in the results of the previous queries. If the plans need to be adjusted, this is done by the applicant and then the building plan is submitted to the municipality. This concludes the preliminary phase of this process flow.
2. Sequential Phase
Following the submission of the building permit in the previous phase, a sequential phase is then followed. This process flow is illustrated in the following figure.
Figure 2. Building permit assessment
This process flow is slightly more complex and involves the querying of several distributed datasets. Following the submission of the building permit by the application, a municipality official will assess whether the application is complex. Assuming for the sake of this demonstration that the application is not complex, the application proceeds to a coordinator. Here, the coordinator will check with Key Register of Persons (Basisregistratie Personen) for the personal information of the applicant. If the personal information of the applicant for the building permit matches the personal information associated with the ownership of the building to which the plan applies as registered in the Key Register Cadastre (Basisregistratie Kadaster), the application will be moved to the permit provider.
The permit provider will perform another check for compliance against the relevant spatial plans. For this, the same spatial plans dataset will be used to check this information. If the building plan is in compliance, the permit provider will then also check whether the building plan complies with the public law restrictions (if any) associated with the address. To check this compliance, the permit provider also needs access to the Public Law Restrictions dataset. Once the application has passed all these compliance check, the positive result will be returned to the applicant.
Personal Information
The first step at which information needs to be retrieved from the portal is to check for personal information. To retrieve the relevant information required for this step, the following question is posed:
- Is the personal information on the application in line with the information in the key register of persons?
To answer this question, a municipality official needs to enter the bsn defined in the building permit application and retrieve the personal information associated with this bsn number. The following query returns personal information. The input parameter allows the user to query personal information for a defined bsn number.
The results of this query then need to be checked against the personal information associated with a given address as registered in the Key Register Cadastre. For this, the person(s) defined as owners of a given building or parcel should be queried. To do so, the following question should be defined as a query:
- Which person is registered as owning a given building, apartment and/or parcel?
This can be answered by the portal in two ways, the first is based on the input of an address as noted in the building plan application and checking for a match in BSN or by inputting the BSN number associated with the building plan and checking if the address matches that noted on the building plan. Both options are implemented in the queries below.
Building Information
Once the personal information has been verified, the spatial plan information and information about public law restrictions should be checked. In order to check this, the following questions are posed:
- What cadastral information is available for the address to which the building plan is associated?
- What spatial plans are applicable to the address of the proposed building plan?
- What spatial area does a spatial plan attached to a specific address apply to?
- What public law restrictions are applicable to the address of the proposed building plan?
The first query simply looks for all the cadastral data associated with a given address including the age and location of the building, the parcel on which the building is located and the size of each of these. The second query is a duplicate of the query used by the applicant in the preliminary phase. Here, the address information associated with a building plan is used as an input parameter to identify the spatial plans and then placed on a map. The last query is also defined based on the available address information and any available law restrictions are returned.
Cadastral Information
Spatial Plans
Public Law Restrictions
If no results are returned in the following query, no public law restrictions apply to a given address.