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1. Introduction
The common understanding of cadastre is that it is a form of land information system. A land information system (LIS) gives support to land management by providing information about the land, the resources upon it and the improvements made to it. The cadastre is a subset of LIS that has been defined as a record of interest in land, encompassing both the nature and the extent of these interests. An interest in land (or property right) may be narrowly construed as a legal right capable of ownership or more broadly interpreted to include any uniquely recognized relationship among people with regard to the acquisition and management of land (NRC 1980). The basic spatial unit of cadastre is a land parcel, on which all land tenure and land use records are compiled. Data that may appear in a cadastre include geometric data (coordinates, maps), property addresses, land use, real property information, the nature and duration of the tenure, details about the construction of buildings and apartments, population, and land taxation values (CERCO 1995).

The diversity of data brings the complexity in data management and requires to be managed by using an advanced database management system (DBMS). A database may have special characteristics according to the structures of the data managed by, such as spatial databases which manage the geographical data. When the time constructs are considered in a spatial database, it is called spatiotemporal database. Database definition and modeling has an important role on database administration and optimizing data storage and processing.

The complexity of spatial data structures and the advances in geographic data management together with a wide application of GIS have made spatial database modeling an interesting and challenging research area. In recent years, several models have been proposed that are based on either an entity-relationship (ER) approach or an object-oriented (OO) approach. MODUL-R, GeO2 and GeoER models were developed based on an ER model. GeOm, POLLEN and CONGOO are the examples for OO approaches in conceptual modeling. As can be seen from the previous studies that a cadastral database should be modeled using a spatial and temporal modeling technique because of its spatial and temporal data characteristics. Basic cadastral queries require information about the changes on objects, their attributes, and the relationships between these objects. Thus, storing historical information on cadastral objects and the relationships between them is an important necessity.

Land registry and cadastral works in Turkey are carried out by the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre (TKGM). While the cadastral surveys are performed by TKGM, the land rights are guaranteed by the state. Since 1925 Turkey’s cadastral system has been formed by the state with several legal and organizational modifications. These modifications have resulted in a lack of standardization and the inconsistency in the geometric aspects of the cadastral data, such as the cadastral maps without a coordinate system or in different coordinate systems. The problems regarding data standardization, data quality, inconsistency, digital archiving, and the slowness in cadastral services forced to make a reform in Turkey’s cadastral system tending towards a computer-based cadastral information system. Several past studies focused on designing a cadastral system in Turkey. Yalin (1986) and Erdi (1990) studied on an overall system design but a detailed spatial database design was not conducted. Ercan (1997) studied the design and the development of a cadastral information system for Turkey. However, he did not use a spatiotemporal database modeling approach. The modernization and the automation of the cadastral system started in 1986 with a reform project on mapping and cadastral works (HAKAR 1986) conducted by TKGM and the Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Organization (TUBITAK). However, the project was stopped after the system analysis phase. In 1990, the first project for developing a Land Registry and Cadastre Information System was planned and accepted as one of the national projects of the State Planning Organization (DPT). Unfortunately, no developments were achieved on this project either. Recently, in 2000, a new project (TAKBIS) started for developing a Land Registry and Cadastre Information System. The goal of TAKBIS is to establish a countrywide cadastral information system by making use of DBMS and GIS software and to develop several application software required by the end users. This project is currently under development and it is anticipated that it will be successfully finished.