Landonline Update June 2022

Nick Stillwell, Lead Consultant Surveyor, Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand

Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) has piloted the new survey application with encouraging results, and excellent progress continues in the survey space with the modernising Landonline programme.

After demonstrating the new survey application at last year’s S+SNZ conference, we piloted it with a small group of users.

Along with positive feedback, particularly around the intuitiveness and the improvements that have been made, usability issues and bugs were identified, and many have been addressed. Overall, we have resolved many of the issues raised by Survey and Spatial members during my original engagement with branches and continue to work on others.

Pilot indicates seamless transition

Business owners told us they wanted the transition to the new system to have less impact on their business than the initial Landonline rollout.

We are encouraged by feedback from pilot users indicating they learnt how to use the new capture tools by watching a 5-minute help video. This is a promising sign that the transition is seamless, and the system is easy to use.

Initially the new system will be completely interoperable with legacy Landonline. As work progresses, we will continue to add missing functionality, make improvements, and resolve issues to ensure the new system is robust and fit-for-purpose for survey capture. When all the capture functionality has been migrated to the new system, capture will be decommissioned in legacy Landonline.

In the future, when all the functionality is fully transitioned, legacy Landonline will be decommissioned. It’s at this point that we will start adding some of the more future-thinking functionality that surveyors have asked for.

Testing with School of Surveying

The next major milestone for the new system is for Otago University’s School of Surveying students to use it to complete their 300 and 400 level cadastral surveying papers. This is the perfect audience to thoroughly test how intuitive the new application is for less experienced Landonline users.

It was a no-brainer for LINZ to get involved with the professional development of the students as they will all be working in the new Landonline when they enter the workforce. As well as telling us how much help new Landonline users will need to get up to speed, the students’ feedback will inform an online help portal that we are developing.

Migrating to the new system

The new Landonline for survey is likely to be launched to all surveyors in 2023. Initially it will only be capture in the new system, for example import LandXML, mark, vector, irregular line, parcel, supporting documents, survey report, easement schedule with Plan generation will continue in legacy Landonline.

But work on replacing plan generation will ramp up when capture has been decommissioned in legacy Landonline. We are pursuing a concept where surveys can be digitally rendered; the goal is to create a more usable visualisation of the survey and reduce the effort required to prepare it.

Exactly what the new world of digitally visualised surveys will look like is not predetermined. So far we have tested initial visualisation prototypes of basic cadastral survey dataset (CSDs) with a range of users – surveyors, solicitors, planners etc – from a variety of backgrounds.

When the functionality is fully transitioned – and we have allowed an acceptable timeframe for transitioning to the new system – legacy Landonline will be switched off. At that point all surveyors will need to have migrated to the new system.

We will then start adding some of the more future thinking functionality that surveyors have asked for.

At the time of writing, I have been in contact with many survey organisations about their preferred approach to getting involved in the new Landonline, and nearly all have indicated a preference to have a user involved early.

I’m looking forward to working with all our stakeholder groups as the system is developed and evolves to meet our needs as surveyors.

Get involved in our next pilot

We have a limited number of places available on our next pilot so you might like to get involved.

If so, please email us at engagement@linz.govt.nz and tell us why you would be a good person to pilot the new system. •