OFFICIAL MAPPING

2. OFFICIAL MAPPING
2.1. The Department of Lands and Mapping of the Ministry of Agriculture and Regional Development (MARD)

The Department of Lands and Mapping (DLM) of MARD continues to be top governmental controlling body of surveying and mapping activities in Hungary according to Act No. LXXVI of 1996, which entered into force in 1 March, 1997. The regulation rules also that military surveying and mapping is controlled by the military mapping agency (see under a separate heading), and stated that further cooperation (division of responsibilities) between the two ministries should be ruled by a joint ministerial order. The order has put responsibility for topographic mapping of scales smaller than 1:10,000 up to 1:250,000 into the hands of the minister of defence.

Primary aim of the Act has been to secure the availability of base maps of the country, that would be suitable, among others

for map-based registrations for efficient title security and for taxation purposes
to assist the establishment of efficient municipality management with GIS/LIS techniques,
as bases for other various geographically referenced information systems,
as bases for the recording of local and national utility networks,
for urban development, zoning, physical and regional planning,
as cartographic base for military and civil defence purposes.

To achieve these aims official base maps (both large-scale and topographic) have to be produced, maintained and supplied for user demand. The new state basic maps have to be created, stored and supplied in computer-based digital form.

DLM is responsible for the establishment and maintenance of national geodetic control networks as well as supplying data from them, for large scale base mapping including cadastral maps, for land registration, land protection and valuation, for topographic mapping of selected scales, and for remote sensing in general.

The Department of Lands and Mapping is organised into three divisions:

Division of Surveying and Informatics supervising the tasks related to control point networks, national cadastral and topographic maps, technical upgrading of land offices and remote sensing.
Division of Land Registration supervising the tasks related to real property registration, land area data supply, carrying out of legal measures pertaining to DLM, revising the appeals against land office decisions.
Division of Land Protection and Land Valuation supervising the tasks related to licensing of non-agricultural use of croplands, control of utilization obligation of croplands, support of land restoration and land use.

DLM is controlling and supervising an institutional network of 115 district land offices, 20 county land offices, as well as the Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing (FÖMI). The overwhelming majority of the staff of this network is therefore engaged in cadastral, title registration, land assessment and surveying activities, with little cartographic activity in the sense proposed by ICA. National surveying and cartographic activities are performed by the FÖMI institute.

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