Mapping Company in a Country in Transition

GEOCAD-93, founded in January 1993 and based in Sofia, Bulgaria, is owned and managed by Zlatan Zlatanov. The company focuses on all types of topographic/geodetic work, including photogrammetry, development and maintenance of digital models of settlements, GIS, and digital terrain models.

Privately owned agricultural land in Bulgaria was nationalised during the communist era (1944-1989). The process of restitution of property to its former owners began in the early nineties. This provided the prerequisites for the first private geodetic companies to appear on the market. The work on property restitution continued over the course of more than ten years, and in some regions is still in progress. As a result of these activities Bulgaria has acquired a relatively complete and precise cadastre of agricultural land ownership (Map of Restituted Property). Such a database is extremely useful and valuable for any country, even when there are inaccuracies in the data, as is undoubtedly the case for Bulgaria.

Cadastre Agency
The Cadastre Agency in Bulgaria was established in 2001 with enforcement of the Law on Cadastre and Property Register. This law provided the grounds for developing the cadastral map for the whole of the country. To date, our company has completed the cadastral maps of two towns: Dupnitsa, covering a total area of 1,000ha was completed in 2003 and Dimitrovgrad, where a total area of 1,000ha was completed in 2005. In 2004, under contract to the Cadastre Agency, we developed a digital model for the town of Burgas, total area of about 4,300ha. Two years later we signed contracts with the Cadastre Agency for a part of the town of Plovdiv, area 1,700ha, and part of the town of Pernik, area 1,300ha.

Construction
We initially focused on restitution procedures relating to property in six villages in the region of Targovishte, and to lands falling within the borders of a great part of the territory occupied by the city of Sofia. After completion of these activities we began to supply geodetic services for construction and design companies; to date we serve nearly half of those in the territory of Sofia. The Captial City Municipality is served by our staff of thirty engineers/geodesists and fifteen technical assistants, utilising our eleven Sokkia total stations and two double-frequency GPS Sokkia Radian receivers. According to contract agreements with the municipality, the company has performed levelling plans for over fifteen regulation plans with a total area exceeding 1,300ha and a street network length of over 300km. More specifically, our largest projects include: topographic plan, design of vertical planning and tracing plan of the Hilton Hotel, Sofia and Business Centres, J, Baucher St., in Sofia. Also, Tracing and Technical Project performance for the vertical planning of the street network of the villa settlements of Allianz, Bulgaria and Union Bank in the town of Bankya. We have performed tracing of the alignment network, HMS transport node, Sofia, and made a topographic plan and tracing of the passenger terminal for the reconstruction of Sofia Airport, and a topographic plan, design of vertical planning and tracing plan of the Bus Station in Sofia. Also a topographic plan, design of vertical planning and tracing plan for the TECHNOPOLIS trade chain, Lyulin quarter, Sofia, and topographic plan, design of vertical planning and tracing plan for the DELTA Company cold store. We have also carried out levelling projects at the Business Park in Sofia; Dragalevtsi quarter, extension to the north; Karpuzitsa quarter; Ovcha Kupel quarter; Yuzhen Park residential building group; Lozenets quarter; Krastova Vada quarter and
others.

Future Growth
The future development of the company is connected to the development and growth of the
photogrammetric sector. In 2005 we established a photogrammetry department and bought equipment for digitalisation and scanning of map materials and aerial photographs. We own a Deltascan470-Auto photogrammetric scanner and Photomod digital photogrammetric stations. Since the beginning of 2006 we have been engaged in digitalisation of map materials in the DGI-EDIGEO format and up until now have digitised over forty thousand properties. The use of and demand for photogrammetric products are still not well developed in Bulgaria. For this reason we plan to create an orthophoto plan and a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) for a part of Sofia City territory, so that we can demonstrate the advantages of these products to potential clients. With the accession of Bulgaria to the EU, Bulgarian geodesists will face new challenges. We hope that the company will be competitive and will find its place on the European market within the scope of its activities.