Analyzing the new 2019 dutch environment and planning act

Abstract

In The Netherlands, all legislation regarding infrastructure and environment is described in more than 250 legal documents. In 2019 the new “Omgevingswet” (translated as “Environment and planning act” [1, 4]) was supposed to come into force. This law modernizes, harmonizes and simplifies the mentioned regulation and integrates this myriad of legislations, decrees and regulations into one legal framework. To be able to apply the environment and planning act, legal analysis of this legislation is required. The Dutch Rijkswaterstaat ministerial department [2, 3] has developed an approach to analyze (interpret), structure and store the rules contained in the legislation. In their approach, all rules are associated with activities, which form a functional structure. This functional structure is the baseline from which relevant parts of the legislation is grouped. This paper describes how this approach works, how it is supported by Fact Based Modeling and the software environment used (Cognitation) to perform the document analysis.