ABSTRACT
In this paper, the importance of historical boundaries and boundary marks is discussed. The first part of the paper presents the Catastrum Grenzsteine project—an international project initiated by The Austrian Society for Surveying and Geoinformation (ASG) on the occasion of 200th anniversary of the establishment of the stable cadastre. The project aims on historical boundary marks in engaged states (e.g.: Czechia, Poland, Italy, Slovenia, etc.). The goal of the project is an establishment of an international database of historical boundary marks and, which is the main goal, submission of the most outstanding boundary marks for the UNESCO World Heritage title.
In the context of the Catastrum Grenzsteine project, boundary marks are presented as a cultural heritage in the second part of the paper. An outstanding value of the boundary marks in a scope of regional development, neighbours’ relations and a feeling of tangible legal certainty and protection of ownership are discussed and presented in a correlation with the UNESCO World Heritage criteria. Several examples of historical boundary marks from Czechia as well as other European countries are given in this part as well.
The third part of the paper focuses on a specific importance of historical boundary marks to real estate cadastre maintenance and renewal. Since maps of the real estate cadastre of the Czech Republic (and cadastres of many other states in the area of former Austrian monarchy as well) is based on the so called stable cadastre, an exploitation of historical boundary marks as identical points for creation of transformation keys between the coordinate system of the stable cadastre and the national coordinate system is evident. Another example is an exploitation of a recognisable boundary marks during a new demarcation of boundary in terrain.
Conclusion on what has been done and proposed future steps—including development of collectors web application for boundary marks data crowdsourcing, workflow for utilisation of an open-source structure-from-motion software for 3D models of boundary marks, etc. - are given in the last part of the paper.
