EGRID
The EGRID is the unique federal identifier of a property recorded in the Swiss official cadastral survey. Made of fourteen characters beginning with CH, it designates a parcel unambiguously across the whole country and does not change as ownership changes. It is the key to a parcel's official data.
The everyday parcel number is cantonal: it belongs to one municipality's land register, and two municipalities may each hold a "parcel 342". That ambiguity makes reliable nationwide data matching impossible. The EGRID solves it by giving every property a federally unique identifier, stable over time, derived from the official cadastral survey.
Federal systems consume this identifier: the RDPPF cadastre queries a parcel by its EGRID, as do swisstopo's geoservices and the cantonal portals. It should not be confused with the EGID, which identifies a building in the Federal Register of Buildings and Dwellings, nor with the EWID, which identifies a dwelling. A parcel carries one EGRID and may hold several buildings, hence several EGIDs.
For an owner, the EGRID is the safest way to designate a parcel without risk of confusion — particularly where one postal address maps to several parcels, or where an undeveloped parcel has no address at all. It is also what lets you verify that an extract, a plan or a report really concerns the right property.
The classic mistake is identifying a parcel by its address: on bare land or at the boundary between two properties, the address often points to the neighbouring built parcel. Any serious analysis therefore anchors on the EGRID, and that identifier appears on a parcel report so the data reported is demonstrably yours.
The EGRID appears on the land register extract, on the RDPPF extract and on cantonal geoportals: click the parcel on the map and the identifier shows in the data sheet. The federal portal cadastre.ch also lets you go from an address to the parcel and read its EGRID.
The parcel number is cantonal and can repeat between municipalities; the EGRID is unique across Switzerland and permanent. Both designate the same property, but only the EGRID removes the ambiguity.
No. The EGRID identifies a parcel; the EGID identifies a building in the Federal Register of Buildings and Dwellings. One parcel can carry several buildings, hence several EGIDs.
No, it attaches to the property, not the owner. It only changes if the parcel itself is altered — split, merged or reallocated in a land consolidation.
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