Surface Flowing Waters Covered Areas From the Cadastre Database as a Source for the National Spatial Water Database—Case Study

ABSTRACT Some countries, within the framework of the real estate cadastre, collect information on land use; therefore, data should be kept up to date, and the information made available on its basis has binding legal effects. The supposed high reliability of this register was the motivation to verify whether the data collected in it could be used to create and update a surface water database. The results obtained show that between 22% and 58% of the land under water is owned by private persons. Between 26% and 59% of the land on which a watercourse occurs is not designated as land with flowing water, but some land was classified as land with flowing waters even though no flowing waters occur on it. The high statistical significance of the results obtained allows us to conclude that the data contained in the cadastre require extensive efforts to improve their quality.