Germany is divided into 65 million parcels, which will soon be digitally accessible to everyone

2024-05-03 10:15:11

EU Regulation 2023/138 Risk and opportunity for the digitalization of forestry (PHOTO)

Berlin (ots) – Germany’s forestry industry is facing a significant turning point as Germany has committed to making all cadastral and parcel data publicly available in accordance with EU Regulation 2023/138. This regulation has a significant impact on forest owners and the digitalization of forestry.

The “Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/138” requires EU member states to make geospatial data on certain topics publicly available, including property boundaries, transport networks, aerial photographs and more. According to survey According to the Federal Office for Cartography and Geodesy, there are around 65 million parcels of land in Germany. The associated data should be publicly available by June 2024, including the forest owners’ parcels. Sensitive forest owner data such as names or tree populations continue to be strictly protected under data protection law and remain private.

Why is this data published?

The publication of this data is intended to support the forestry industry in developing resilient and adaptable strategies. Using a digital overview of parcels, forestry communities, associations, private companies and forest owners could better contact and cooperate with one another.

What challenges arise with high-value datasets?

Die INSPIRE policy of the European Union was created to improve the availability of spatial data in Europe, to make it more usable and to achieve harmonization among member states. In theory, the data sets should be harmonized among member states and their respective federal states. In practice, however, it turns out that data is published in different formats, data structures and on different platforms. Germany alone has 65 million parcels of land that can be assigned to an owner. These parcels are polygons and have very different contours, corner points and each have a cadastral data number. We also know from forestry that the smallest areas dominate in the forest, so-called towel areas of less than five hectares. Can you imagine that this huge amount of data sets is not easy to collect and process? If there are 65 million parcels of land, how can forest owners find their needle in a haystack online and use the information to their advantage?

“With 24 years of IT experience, WoodsApp is very familiar with the processing of such huge amounts of data. We bring this multitude of different data into a common format, called harmonization, and make it available in our free, mobile application and web application across Germany and Austria ready!”, explains Sophia Trautmann, communications officer at WoodsApp.

When can landowners view their data digitally?

All data should be public in June 2024. We cannot yet assess whether all federal states will already make this data available at this point, but all data will certainly be compiled over the course of the summer.

What added value can WoodsApp create with this new data?

The first company to make this data publicly available is WoodsApp, the mobile forestry stakeholder platform. So far, WoodsApp has been able to access cadastral data from 8 federal states available digitally in the free version. Starting this summer, every forest owner in all German and Austrian federal states will finally be able to find their parcels in the app. Data on vitality can also be viewed in detail individually in the app. Owners, clubs, managers, service providers, forestry companies and forestry associations can also communicate with each other and plan measures using WoodsApp. For example, complex inspections can be simplified because the vitality map can be used to plan more precisely in advance. WoodsApp thus supports the implementation of sustainable forestry strategies by its users.

About WoodsApp:

WoodsApp is a mobile forestry platform that helps forest owners manage and use their forests more efficiently. With 24 years of IT experience, the developers of the BitApps Group provide an innovative product for the digital transformation of agriculture and forestry by usefully combining geodata and information technology.