Automating Government Spatial Transactions

The land development approval process between local authorities and government land and planning departments is manual, time consuming and resource intensive. For example, when new land subdivisions, new roads and road naming, and administrative boundary changes are requested, approval and changes to spatial datasets are needed. The land developer submits plans, usually on paper, and a number of employees use rules, constraints and policies to determine if such plans are acceptable. This paper presents an approach using Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence techniques to automate the decision-making process in Australian jurisdictions. Feedback on the proposed plan is communicated to the land developer in real-time, thus reducing process handling time for both developer and the government agency. The Web Ontology Language is used to represent relationships between different entities in the spatial database schema. Rules on geometry, policy, naming conventions, standards and other aspects are obtained from government policy documents and subject-matter experts and described using the Semantic Web Rule Language. Then when the developer submits an application, the software checks the rules against the request for compliance. This paper describes the proposed approach and presents a case study that deals with new road proposals and road name approvals.