Proc. of the 3rd Annual Conference of Research@Locate (R@Loc'16), Melbourne, Australia, 12–14th April

In 2011 the Digital Cadastre Protocol (ePlan) was introduced in Victoria. ePlan is a collaborative program between the Australian land authorities and the surveying industry, in conjunction with the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM). ePlan is to replace paper and PDF plans with digital files based on a national standard. ePlan has been operational in Victoria for 2D (nonbuilding) plans since 2013 and several services such as validation, visualisation and digital data download have been built within the Victorian land authority Land Victoria systems. The Victorian ePlan project is faced with some challenges that will impact the uptake of this initiative among the cadastral surveyors, e.g. surveyors acceptance of adopting a new method of producing plans, quality of the visualisation service which converts the ePlan LandXML file into PDF as the legal title diagram and support for 3D building subdivision plans. In order to overcome the identified challenges, Land Victoria has defined several research programs. An ‘ePlan Engagement Program’ has commenced and aims to gain a greater understanding of surveying firms’ subdivision processes and how ePlan can fit into them and also means surveyors are participating in ePlan’s development. The design and development of a new online tool is also under investigation which aims to enable surveyors to improve the quality of the visualised PDF and define sheets, exaggerations and enlargements when required. Another ongoing research program is related to the technical aspect of a 3D digital cadastre for Victoria including 3D data modelling, validation and visualisation components. This paper aims to explore the current status of the Victorian ePlan implementation and discuss the identified challenges and ongoing investigations.