Legal and Technical Aspects of Decisions on Property Boundaries ­ The Case of Austria

Authors

• Gerhard Navratil

Keywords:

Cadastre, decision-making, law.

Abstract

Legal-technical systems like cadastral systems combine technical and legal aspects. Decisions are an important aspect of a system. Decision-making processes in legal systems have other principles than those in technical systems. The processes may even have different results. In combined legal-technical systems this will cause problems. The paper discusses legal and technical aspects of decision making processes. The discussion reflects that the Austrian Supreme Administrative Court (VwGH) in 1983 ruled that a distance of 3.96 m from a building to the boundary of the neighbouring parcel was insufficient if the law demands a distance of 4 m. The context of this ruling includes that the Austrian cadastre records boundary coordinates and stipulates a 15 cm deviation limit as acceptable since 1969. Furthermore, once the coordinates are recorded, the cadastral prescripts do not allow for changes even if later measurements of better quality warrant this. Investigation of the legal and technical approaches suggests that the technical process is capable of improving the quality of continuous data, whereas the legal approach adopted in Austria can only deal with discrete data and prevents gradual improvements. The paper demonstrates the need for further investigations into the issue of determination of property boundaries.