Geographic data representing land parcels — the legally defined units of land ownership — including their boundaries and associated attributes such as owner, assessed value, zoning, and land use.
Parcel data is one of the most fundamental datasets in municipal GIS. Each parcel is a polygon representing one unit of land ownership. Parcel datasets typically include attributes like the parcel identifier (PIN or PID), owner name, civic address, assessed value, lot area, and zoning classification.
Parcel data is used for property assessment, urban planning, emergency response, infrastructure management, and open data publishing. Many Canadian municipalities publish parcel data as open data, though some attributes (like owner names) may be withheld for privacy reasons.
Example: A city's open data portal publishes a parcel dataset with boundaries, civic addresses, assessed values, and zoning classifications for all 200,000 properties in the city. Researchers use it to analyze the distribution of property values, identify underutilized land, and study the relationship between zoning and development patterns.