The BLM and USDA Forest Service, in partnership with states, counties, and private industry, have embarked on a mission to modernize land records under the National Integrated Land System (NILS).  As stated on the NILS web site, “The goal of NILS is to provide a process to collect, maintain, and store parcel-based land and survey information that meets the common, shared business needs of land title and land resource management.”

The NILS components are: Survey Management, Measurement Management, Parcel Management, and GeoCommunicator, which are explained in detail on the NILS web site: http://www.blm.gov/nils/.

NILS will encompass

• the worlds of  PLSS and metes and bounds surveys
• urban and rural environments
• survey control and map control
• digitized data, scanned, data, GPS data, legal descriptions, orthophotography
• customization for user specific needs

NILS and the Cadastral Data Content Standard
A key element of NILS will be the Common Cadastral Data Model.  This model will be built upon the FGDC Cadastral Data Content Standard, and is thus a physical implementation of the standard.  Through the use of the Cadastral Data Content Standard, NILS will take advantage of the opportunity to build cadastral and land record information that can be shared by many organizations.
 

NILS and GCDB
The Measurement Management component of NILS relies on the GCDB Measurement Management system (GMM) to create a higher-quality control network database for both PLSS and metes and bounds land environments.  This is an ARC/INFO based capability.  Thus, in effect, NILS integrates GCDB into ARC/INFO coverages.