The use of LADM primitives and structured indexing to support automated registration (20220401)
Channel: Ant Beck
Date: 2022-03-24

The Land Administration Domain Model (LADM cite:[iso_tc211_iso_2012]) is a conceptual model which supports the modelling of social relations with land articulated through _rights_.
There are three principal concepts within LADM: the party (_the who_) that has a rights relationship (_the what_) with a plot of land (_the where_).
As an abstraction the party-right-land model makes it easy to conceptualise the _state_ of real rights (all _real rights_ are _rights in land_).
It is simple to model who owns a piece of land and, using a spatial index, determine who holds rights which encumber all, or part, of the same land.
When the land identifier (index) is used as a proxy for a party it is also easy to identify what rights benefit the owned land based on a party index.
As such it is also reasonably obvious that a party-right-land model is closely related to a Title.

A deed registerable in a Land Register is a legal instrument that represents a real rights _state change_.
A deed describes real right transactions that result in the _creation, variation or discharge_ of party-right-land relationships.
citenp:[henssen_basic_1995(7)] describes four general principles that underpin transactions within Land Registers.
Critical for automated transactions is the _specificity principle_: the principle that the transactional party-right-land components must be unambiguously identified.

Party verification and designation during registration allows us to uniquely identify _the who_.
The formalised sub-set of registerable rights (_numerus clausus_) makes it easy to identify _the what_.
_The where_ is the _cadastral unit_ that uniquely identifies each owned _plot of land_ and the associated spatial representation in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadastre#Map[*cadastral map*].
The _specificity principle_ means that the Registrar can unambiguously identify the party-right-land relationship which is to change either explicitly or by reference to the corresponding deed in the deed chain.
citenp:[zevenbergen_what_2019(4),palmer_incentive-based_1996(63)] both argue for the explicit inclusion of parcel-based (cadastral) registers to improve the rigour of Deeds based registration systems.

Once the party-right-land relationship has been unambiguously identified then the nature of the transactional change can be articulated.
Owners can vary their ownership in terms of a party, right or land dimension.
A _party variation_ allows an owner to transfer (sell) all or part of their property.
All such transfers are _in personam_ - the variation specifically identifies the third party grantee who benefits from the rights transfer.
A _rights variation_ allows an owner to alienate rights (such as access) which can then be transferred to third parties.
A _land variation_ allows an owner to split their ownership in to multiple spatial parts some of which can then be transferred to third parties.
In this manner a deed represents a party-right-land _state change_.

This paper considers automation of registration based on LADM primitives.
To automate registration the deed should be delivered in such a manner that enables the  _state change_ articulated in a deed to be digitally enacted on the register without human intervention.
It will initially consider the nature of deeds as conveyancing transactions and how these deeds are submitted as an _application_ to the Registrar to change the _state_ of records in the Land Register.
The _application_ is validated by the Registrar to ensure that it is suitable for registration (the validation process will not be discussed in this paper).
If not rejected then the submitted deed is registerable.
Key to the approach is how an application can be used to frame both the legal instrument (the deed) and the database update that allows the deed to be registered in the Land Register.
The registration process takes the _state change_ articulated in the deed and either records or registers the change as appropriate.
This requires the extraction of the _key registrable content_ in the deed.
In this example the extraction problem is solved by articulating the _key registrable content_ in the application and using the application to create the deed and register the state change.
This means that the application becomes the vehicle that creates the deed, as well as the vehicle that delivers the deed to the Registrar.
By necessity the semantics surrounding registration will become highly formalised to provide complete and flexible registration capability.
If implemented, this approach may require a change to any supporting real property registration legislation.
In this paper we will demonstrate this process and provide an exemplar during a live presentation.