G2 SURVEYS

Cadastral Survey

26 November 2019

In the previous blog, we had a look at the first “branch service” of land surveying offered by G2 Surveys Mapping, the As-built survey. To recap, an As-Built Survey is a survey performed by a professional and licensed land surveyor to show a building or structure exactly as it is built at a specific point in time. An As-built survey is used for monetary purposes, to track the progress of work during a project and to determine if a project was completed according to plan and specifications.

Next up is the Cadastral Survey.

The Cadastral Survey can be traced as far back as 2700 BC during ancient Egyptian times. Some hieroglyphs and artefacts which were discovered suggest that land surveying was used by the ancient Egyptians to re-establish boundaries of plots after the annual floods of the Nile river. Therefore, it can be said that the Cadastral Survey was the first-ever form of land surveying.

Agricultural advancements during these times resulted in a need for land ownership. For land ownership to be clear and legal it was necessary for land to be measured and for the data collected during these measurements to be recorded in a register. The tombs contain evidence which suggests that there was indeed a body of public land registration and that a cadastral survey was required for a plot to be registered for land ownership to be legal and true.

Thousands of years have passed, but the purpose of cadastral surveys remain more or less the same. Cadastral surveying as we know it today has to do with the survey and dividing lines of land to establish parcels of land for registration with a country’s land registry.

Cadastral surveying in South Africa can only be conducted by a registered professional land surveyor who has a valid land surveying license.

The demarcation information of a parcel of land which is gathered by a land surveyor during a cadastral survey is used to record land ownership in a public register. This information can be used to legally resolve any disputes about property boundaries between two or more individuals. If the owner of the land should wish to divide his or her property, to sell a section, for example, a cadastral survey is conducted once again to establish the boundaries of the new parcels of land which will then be re-registered according to the new measurements. Furthermore, cadastral surveys are used to establish beacons when they cannot be found or have been lost.

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