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The shifting of the shoreline is a natural phenomenon closely related to the existence of watercourses. One of its consequences is the need to periodically update the real estate cadastre with regard to parcel boundaries and their owners. Land use types use are also subject to updates, which bears particular significance in this context. This article presents the most essential practical aspects of establishing the shoreline in Poland, including the identification of property boundaries located in the immediate vicinity of watercourses. The main problems associated with conducting the process of demarcating land under water are discussed using selected technical reports as examples. Attention is drawn to the numbering of parcels resulting from the implementation of the analyzed procedure, as well as the precision of recording surface areas. Moreover, the consequences of changing the natural watercourse shoreline and the limitations imposed on property ownership rights are presented, along with the issue of compensation claims.

In Poland, the cadastre is the basic register which is the source of information on cadastral entities and their property. Therefore, it should constitute a reliable source of information in the scope of establishing the range of law, its nature, but also the subject of its ownership. However, it is necessary to be able to not only check the current information on the legal status and its scope, but also review past statuses or determine the rights that will influence real estate in the future. The cadastre and related rights are changing very dynamically over time, and each state has a very strict reference to the previous state. Therefore, in order to manage real estate in the most effective way, it is necessary to record temporal attributes of cadastre objects.

Usable floor area is one of the most important spatial attributes of buildings and premises. It is used, for example, to determine the basis for their taxation. Unfortunately, the question of proper determination of usable floor area in Poland has remained problematic for many years, which is closely related to the occurrence of various definitions of usable floor area in the currently binding legal acts. Consequently, usable floor area is not a universal attribute. This means that in certain cases significant discrepancies may occur between the usable floor area of the same structure, determined for different purposes. In addition, despite attempts made to unify the principles for the performance of surveys of building structures and their parts, this requirement still can not be recognized as fully met. Therefore, there is no doubt that the problem of reliability and availability of data defining the usable floor area of buildings is becoming even more important in view of the introduction of the ‘ad valorem’ tax, which has been planned for years. For this reason, this paper proposes a universal, multi-variant method of estimating usable floor area based on geometric and descriptive data of buildings contained in the cadastre. The Authors, taking into account the applicable legal regulations, have considered the possibilities of practical implementation of individual variants of this specific method. They have carried out empirical tests of effectiveness of the proposed approach. They have also defined tasks for which this method of determining the usable floor area of buildings would be particularly useful.