General cadastre and land registration in Romania 

Cadastre and land registration are basic infrastructure necessary for economic and social development. With support from the World Bank, Romania started in 1998 a USD 35 million project of general cadastre and land registration where Kampsax A/S (COWI A/S) was awarded the technical assistance contract.

The advisory support provided by COWI had the following main objectives:

• Establishment of an efficient system for securing land titles.
• Creation of a general cadastre system which provided clear and current definitions of parcels for property registration and facilitated open access to registers.
• Setting up a safe and cost effective procedure for property transactions in order to enhance the use of property as collateral.

Furthermore, COWI assisted with all aspects related to the merger of the cadastre and land registration functions into a single self-funded state agency.

Examples of the detailed services provided:

Institutional Strengthening:

• Capacity building, training and public awareness campaign. 
• Practices of property valuation, cost recovery and financial projections.
• Support with change management during merger of cadastre and land book functions.
• Monitoring and evaluation.

Development of Cadastre:

• Design of workflows and procedures for cadastre cases. 
• Methodology, specifications and quality assurance for data capture, index maps, orthophotos, and integrated information system, scanning of old maps, etc. 
• Design and development of an image web server application to store and retrieve digital graphic data.

Development of Land Book:

• Design of workflows and procedures for real property transactions. 
• Technical specifications for data conversion. 
• Review and amendment of laws and regulations.