These surveys, as well as the skills and expertise of its staff, have enabled the office to establish an accurate, rigid and comprehensive network of horizontal and vertical control points that will cover the whole of Hong Kong.

The network, together with the use of global positioning system technologies and the establishment of active reference stations, will facilitate the determination of positions in real time.

Leveraging the full value of this data through a dynamic survey and mapping operation is vital to Hong Kong's future growth and success.

From this data, the office produces and updates maps of various scales. Its cartographic and reprographic services then design and compile the maps, colours and symbols, producing repromats.

Land boundary surveys - defined by measuring, recording and marking boundaries of land parcels - enable the transfer of ownership of government land to private owners and non-government bodies, the allocation of land to government departments and the designation of special areas such as country parks and road and lane limits. This work accounts for the largest deployment of the office's resources.

To facilitate these surveys, each District Survey Office maintains records on land boundaries, previous surveys and proposals for land use.

Topographic surveys record all natural and manmade ground surfaces in Hong Kong. They enable the production of both paper and digital maps.

A computerised land information system under the control of the Land Information Centre has been installed in all the District Survey Offices. It contains up-to-date land data and has a unique geographic framework and standard upon which other users may build their own subsystems, enabling the integration of a network of land information systems.

According to deputy director for Survey and Mapping Yeung Kin-fai, a geographic data centre will be established for various government departments to share resources and information on digital map products.

Different government departments are now developing their respective products by adding value to the Survey and Mapping's digital maps.

Through a geographic data centre, all the value-added products could be grouped on a common platform so that the departments can share resources.

To facilitate the establishment of such a centre, Mr Yeung says the office needs to build a data dissemination system for the sharing of resources and information.

The office is awaiting the allocation of government funding of $10 million to update road centre lines, slopes and buildings.

With the geographic data centre, information flow will be streamlined.

Meanwhile, the office has developed a geocommunity database, which is a set of geo-coded community information embedded with spatial reference in Microsoft Excel database format.

The database is a collection of points of interest such as schools, clinics, libraries and MTR stations, where address information, contact details and other service information for public and leisure facilities can be found.

It can be used to carry out location searches for various facilities in a non-map environment. Alternatively, it can be used with the office's other digital map bases for supporting geographic information systems analysis.

The geocommunity database comprises seven categories, namely education, leisure, medical, public services, religion, tourism and transportation.

It is available for sale on a district-by-district basis. The delineation is based on the 18 district council electoral boundaries.