Information on the Environment and its Protection in Real Property Management

Environmental protection regulations influence the use of real property. Land located within the borders of a national park or nature reserve is subject to partial or total restriction on development by construction, as well as, amongst others, business, trade, manufacturing or agricultural activities. Such areas are also subject to landscape protection, whereby real development by construction is possible, but only under the condition that it does not clash with the landscape values of the area. Therefore, real property management in such areas requires careful coordination with the relevant legislation concerning environmental protection.

While it is currently possible to obtain such information from existing environmental protection databases and systems, this has practical problems owing to the large amount of them and their scattered locations. Additionally, as each institution involved in environmental issues has collected material independently, there is a high level of data repetition as well as incomplete data. Such problems make it difficult to make full use of the database systems.

A lack of communication and reference between these databases and systems can create confusion. Comparative data on the same subject often differs depending on the source (as concerns graphic presentation and, much less frequently, data attributes). For example, the course of the same river differs depending on which data resources are used (NAŁĘCZ 2007). There are several hundreds of databases and registers maintained in Poland, with almost 300 databases and registers controlled by the Ministry of Environment. Almost 60 such databases can be found in public administrative bodies alone. A portion of the data regarding this topic is openly available on the Internet.

The aim of the paper is to present the existing information systems concerning environmental protection. The paper will also examine data obtained from these resources, as well as their availability and connections with real property management activities.