Survey of Israel
The Survey of Israel (1949 - present), known after 1949 as the Department of Surveys-Israel (מַחלָקָה המדידות-ישראל) and since 1988 known as the Israel Mapping Center (המרכז למיפוי ישראל), is the successor of the Survey Department of Palestine, established by the British Mandate authorities in 1920. Under the British Mandate, the Survey was initially responsible for undertaking cadastral surveys and adjudicating land disputes, working with vague Ottoman-era records which were unreliable in any case due to property owners seeking to reduce their tax burden. When Jewish settlers began arriving in large numbers at the turn of the 20th century, they were often sold land from these ill-defined plots without any record of sale. Thus, the Survey was responsible for the laborious task of first producing a precise cadaster and then resoling the resulting disputes. From 1940, it shifted focus to drawing topographical maps of the Mandate's territory, a project that carried over into the post-1949 period. Under the United Nations plan for the partition of Palestine, the Survey was also meant to be divided into Jewish and Arab sections, but in effect most of the Survey's workers and records ended up in Tel Aviv. In the post-statehood era, the Survey continued topographical surveys and cadastral work in remote areas and in recent decades has adopted cutting-edge technologies such as geoinformatics.
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