SUMMARY

From an increasing interest in large scale complex systems a research to these systems defining them as being socio-technical is conducted at Delft University of Technology. In this paper the ideas and concepts in this research are explained and used in analysing the cadastral system. Socio-technical systems consist of social and technical elements and agents. We argue that social elements are of a fundamental different nature than technical elements and, therefore, need to be treated differently. System theories in engineering and in social sciences do not take this distinction sufficiently into account. The cadastral system is based on the social concept of ownership of real estate. Nevertheless technology plays an essential role in modern cadastral system. Therefore I argue that the cadastral system is a socio-technical system with a social core. This has far going implications for modelling and designing the cadastral system. The idea of designing seems to vanish completely, while with regard to modelling the dynamic aspects of the social character of the system have great impact. Neither the Cadastre 2014 document nor the (Lemmen et al. 2003) model (both aiming at future cadastral systems) do take sufficient notion of the nature of the cadastral system