Land Management Information Systems
Development Project in Korea
Abstract: This presentation will provide the overview of the Land Management
Information Systems (LMIS) Development Project that is undergoing in Korea. This
project aims to cover land use planning, land management policy, land administration
systems. Specifically, it includes the stategy of land management, public/private
partnership development, descriptions for the system architecture, database, and
applications developed, and the future directions of the project. The LMIS developed
will be also demonstrated, which consists of land mangement system, spatial planning
support system, and land policy support system.
Introduction: Project Overview

Background & Goal
Local and central government(MOCT; Ministry of Construction and Transportation)
have many land management businesses. Services for public and businesses for basic
data creation and maintenance are mainly carried out by local governments. MOCT
collects and analyses the data related to land, and develops various land policy based
on them. But it is very difficult to make rational and scientifical land policy in timely
manner because the data are collected through many steps in conventional-manual
method.
More over, there are many zoning systems to manage land use based on laws in this
country. It is not easy to search what regulations designated on a land parcel.
Inconsistency of regulations between zoning systems is often happened. Inconsistency
also takes place because zoning systems designate their own maps used, which have
different scales and are different types one another. However these not exposed
seriousely in analogue format of data such as paper maps. These cause some
difficulties in data sharing in digital format.
To solve these problems, some local governments had introduced information
technologies including GIS. Because these efforts has been accomplished in local
scope without nation-wide consideration, many problems is happening in data sharing
and interoperabilty.
The Land Management Information Systems(LMIS) Development Project had
launched in 1998 by central government to solve the problems and to improve land
management business process using GIS.

Target Business
LMIS aims to develop diverse application systems to improve administrative land
management businesses. Those are as follow;
Local government's land management business
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Pemission management for land trade
Foreigner's land acquisition management
Land development allotment
Management of public announcement of Land appraisal system
Real estate brokerage management
Zoning management
Currently, in Korea, there are 16 provincial-level governments, and 232 lower-level
local governments (municipal governments), including 72 si (city) governments, 91
gun (county) governments, and 69 gu (city district) governments within the
autonomous cities.
Central government(Land Bureau of MOCT)'s land policy business
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Land policy making
Statistic management related to land
Business process between local and central gov't
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The Korea Land Development Corporation
Promoting bodies and its roles
Supervision(main sponsor)
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Land Bureau of MOCT and Local Gov't
Executing Agencies
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
Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements studies on institutional
matters for informationization and education on this project management
to public servants of local gov't
SK C&C takes charge of system development, Integration, installation
and user education
Roles of central and local governments.
Central gov't
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Research for LMIS
Integrated database creation, application development
Installation and user education
Local gov't
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
H/W(DB server, PC client), Peripheral devices, N/W, RDBMS
Digital cadastral map creation
History of project implementation
1997. 5
Feasibility study on LMIS
1997.7
Master plan
1998.2 - 1998.12 Pilot project(for a local gov't)
1999.9 - 2000.12 1st stage(for 12 local gov't)
2000.8 - 2001. 6 2nd stage(for 60 local gov't)
Strategies for LMIS Development

Business process reengineering and institutional improvement
BPR(business process reengineering) is needed. Land management business process
must be properly changed to new information technology environment. Land
management business, which defined in a related acts and ordinances will be
processed by online networking. Many steps that are necessary in conventional
business process could be eliminated through data sharing and networking. There
might be many institutional factors to be improved for this BPR. A study on the
improvement of land management related laws and regulations is undergoing.

Standardization
The LMIS development project was initiated to share land information data
through nationwide network for public service and policy making by central
government(MOCT). For this, integrated data model and contents standards
were established and now are being maintained every year.

Open system architecture
Local governments have very diverse computer platform some another. They also
have various GIS S/W's. An open system architecture could provide interoperability
between different computer platforms and different S/W's. It will make local
governments share existing resouces in this computing environment. LMIS has
adapted 3-tier open system architecture for interoperability in this computing
environment, which is compose of client, DB Server and middleware. This
architecture enables also nationwide data sharing and scaling up.

Component development
LMIS has been developed for six land management businesses. Each business
application has similar functions as like map display, print, zoom in or out etc. In
object-oriented programming and distributed object technology, a component is a
reusable program building block that can be combined with other components in the
same or other computers in a distributed network to form an application. So it is an
efficient way of decomposing business process into common meaningful unit. And
these could be developed as components using CORBA or COM techonology. LMIS
components are reused in a distribued computing environment.

Distributed computing
LMIS will be the nationwide network system that connects local and
central government's systems that have their own database and common application.
For this, a distributed computing environment is needed.

Nationwide networking
One of the goals of LMIS is to manage land data from local governments in a real
time, to serve zoning information to citizens at any time and any place to improve the
efficiency of land management business. These will be accomplished by nationwide
online networking.

Education
The elements of LMIS consists of H/W, S/W, N/W, database, application, and public
servants who operate this system. First of all human resources are the most important
factor. The success of the project depends on actively participation of officials in
charge in system developing stage, and using LMIS. Information mind of local
government officials are not formed concretely yet. Education for information mind,
project management methodology will be very helpful for local government's public
servants. Also user operation for application have been educated after installation.
Building Database

Topographic map
National GIS project was initiated in 1995 in Korea. As a part of that, digital
topographic maps were made in a CAD format(DXF). This is composed of about 670
layers. But the data have limitations in analyzing and utilizing as GIS data. In LMIS
project the data are converted to GIS data, several themes such as road, building,
stream, geodetic point, elevation, railway, etc., are selected among them, and cleaned
for this project.

Cadastral map
Cadastral map is very important in Korea because people regard land as important
property. That is to say that people have great concerns for their area of land, the the
boundary of parcel must be accurate. But paper cadastral maps that were made in
1910's by Japan have been expanded and shrinked from their original status. Naturally
there are many difficulties in edgematching. And the data do not have consistency
exactly with topographic map because of the problems. To solve the problems, the
project of computerizing cadastral map was implemented in 1999. In this project only
existing cadastral maps are digitized as register maps. But LMIS needs continuous
cadastral maps and edited map to overlay on topographic maps for land administration
business data.

Zoning map
There are many zoning maps for land use regulation, such as national land use
planning map, urban land use planning map, agriculture promotion zoning map, forest
land use map. These data have legal relationships or spatial context. But the
difficulties in data sharing between departments charge of the businesses and the lack
of accuracy in manual business process makes inconsistencies on these data. These
problems has been studied to build consistent zoning map database, and now a
guideline for resolving then is laid out.

Conceptual database building process and their relationship
All above data have relationships each other and these are important in database
building. Figure 1 shows the database building process and the relationships between
them.
Figure 1. Database building process model
Application development

Conceptual diagram of LMIS
LMIS has four major systems, such as land management business system, spatial data
management system in local gov't, land use planning support system in provincial
gov't, and land policy-making support system in central gov't(MOCT). Land
management business system has six application sub-systems.
Figure 2. Conceptual Diagram of LMIS

System architecture
LMIS is developed with a 3-tier architecture regarding heterogenious computing
environments in local gov'ts. In other words, open system architecture is necessarily
adopted to share data and to service nationwide on various computer platform in local
governments. Specially the middleware, which has functions as broker between DB
Server and client, can make free from different computing environments.
Figure 3. System Architecture

Middleware architecture
Local governments have various computing platforms. For sharing data and
supporting nationwide through on-line network, middleware was considered as a
solution under heterogeneous computing environments. This could be developed to
support communications between diverse DB server and clients. The middleware
makes any client independent from server platform, but necessarily to enable to be
interoperable.
The LMIS middleware was based on OpenGIS CORBA sepcification for development
of standard interface, RUP(rational unified process) for development method,
UML(unified modeling language) for system design, VisiBroker, C++ and JAVA for
system implementation. The components of open LMIS middleware are data
providers that make any kind of server or S/W can access SDE and ZEUS as GIS
server, MapAgent that displays maps, OpenView that has core functionalities of GIS,
MapOCX that provides spatial information to client, and web service that provides
citizens to zoning information through internet.

Applications
Land management business system of local gov't consist of seven applications, which
are including one spatial data management system and six administrative management
systems such as land transaction, foreigner's land acquisition, land development
allotment, real estate agent, public land pricing, zoning system.
Figure 5. Public land pricing management system in local gov't
Land use planning support system for provincial gov't is developing as a web-based
intranet system. Anyone who has a permission to access the system in provicial gov't
can easily install web browser, connect LMIS DB Server and search and display data
that he wants.
The central gov't(MOCT) needs to analyze land data collected from local
governments. The land policy-making support system can make statistics, moniter
land speculation, and support spatial decision making. The prototype system was
developed with Arc/info S/W, Visual basic, C++ etc.
Figure 6. Land policy-making support system(prototype) of central gov't(MOCT)
Future
This LMIS development project will be done till 2004. Certainly the information
technology will be developed.

As a component of Electronic government
G4C(Government for Citizen) project was launched in 2000 by the central
governments in Korea. Its goal is to make small but strong government for data
sharing inter-devisions using various information technology. A Law related to digital
authentication, digital signing and encryption was alreay enacted. And from July 1st,
new law related to electronic government will come into operation. As result of this
project, civil affair documents that citizens should summit for their business with local
governments will be simplified or minimized, and civil inquiries would be reduced.
LMIS project also could be understood in this context. This has to deal with various
civil petition related to land use in electronic or cyber government. It requires
many researches on new techology and institutional device for LMIS in electronic
government.

More sohisticated and user-oriented interface
There are personnel appointments frequently. This means that officials who manage
LMIS can be changed suddenly. If the system does not have user-friendly interface, a
newly recruited person should spend a lot of time to be accustomed to the system, or
anyone might give up to use the system. Therefore sophisticated and user-friendly
interface is necessary. A further research on UI with BPR shold be implemented.

Developing analytical techniques for land policy making
The final goal of information system is to support decision-making, and LMIS is not
an exception. Techniques analyze land data collected from local governments in real
time have to be developed. Nowadays trends of current research for LMIS should
move from database creation and maintenace and application development to land
data analysing techniques.
Acknowledgements:
Tae-ho Kim, Land Bureau of MOCT, Chief of Land Management Division
Cha-hyun Back, Land Bureau of MOCT, Director of LMIS Project
Jae-jeong Heo, Land Bureau of MOCT, Assistant Director of LMIS Project
Eun-ho Mun, SK C&C, Director of LMIS Dev't Team
Kyu-soo Kim, SK C&C, Director of LMIS Data Base Dev't Team
Gi-seob Shin, SK C&C, Director of LMIS Installation & User Education Team
Web site: http://lmis.moct.go.kr
Authors information:
Byong-nam Choe, Research Fellow of KRIHS(Korea Research Institute for Human
Settlements), Director of LMIS Research Team
Jong-yeol Lee, Research Fellow of KRIHS, Co-director of LMIS Research Team
Dae-jong Kim, Associate Research Fellow of KRIHS, Assistant Director of LMIS
Research Team
Mi-jeong Kim and Kwon-hwan Lee, Researcher of KRIHS
Chang-wan Seo, SK C&C, Director of LMIS Application Dev't Team