Search

Beyond international guidelines and agreements, over the last decade the focus of the global development community turned to collaboratively designing technical methodologies and tools to support women’s access to land. The Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) provides a prime example of one of these technical initiatives. Whilst LADM was developed with the aim to support the access to land for women and vulnerable groups as a key design criterion, many other potentially conflicting requirements influenced the developed model. Moreover, after a decade of the standard being in practice and applied in various country contexts, there now exists the impetus and opportunity to assess whether the LADM can support the access to land for women and vulnerable groups in practice, including an assessment of the standard against new international standards and agreements emerging over the previous decade. This paper therefore assesses the gender sensitivity of the LADM, from a technical perspective, which is needed to better understand and therefore support and strengthen the documentation and recordation of women’s land rights through standard based systems, and basic datasets. The research type ‘modelling’ is followed to identify requirements from related land administration literature, and to model and match these with the current Edition I of the LADM. The status of the current version of the LADM with regards to whether, and if how it deals with these requirements was assessed. Potential actions for improvements to the LADM were recorded and some examples illustrate options of people to land relationships considering a women perspective and how the LADM would currently model those people-to-land relationships. The assessment shows that the LADM contains significant functionality to support women’s access to land and hence support the implementation of a gender sensitive land administration system. The potential and importance of standards, such as the LADM, and their role in the recognition of women’s land rights is shown and therefore future developments and uptake of such standards are seen as imperative for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The introduction or renewal of information systems conventionally begins with data modelling. In the domain of land administration, like others, the process is challenging: complex laws and regulations, lengthy process descriptions, shared organisational responsibilities, differing information encodings and formats, and seeking compliance with the LADM ISO 19152 standard, must be considered. Between 2016 and 2018, The Netherlands’ Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency – in short, Kadaster – successfully undertook the renewal of the information system supporting its deeds registration. The previous system dated back to the 1980s. In-house data modelling specialists led the program, the most extensive undertaken in decades. Inspired by action-research principles, the process and resultant lessons are documented using a case study approach. It is shown that beyond Model Driven Architectures, other model-driven methodologies, such as Domain-Driven Design, are entirely useful in the land administration domain. A domain is usually more extensive than a few objects, and to make it more manageable, DDD divides a domain into subdomains. The DDD term ‘problem domain’ is used to define a functional area within a context such as an organisation or department. The terms domain in DDD and LADM have common characteristics as considering contexts such as a land registry and a cadastre. Evans (2003) and Vernon (2013) articulate how DDD is a set of design practices, techniques and fundamental principles, terms, and implications to facilitate the development of software projects within complex domains, used to guide software developers and domain experts to share and represent models of knowledge from the domain. In DDD, the ubiquitous language is also essential in intersecting the jargons between domain experts and IT experts. The LADM provides a formal language for describing similarities and differences for describing the many aspects of the land administration domain. The approach demands greater participation from domain experts: they lead modelling of the current state and its evolution: the events. The Annex N of ISO 19152 describes that LADM covers both event-based and state-based modelling via LA_Source and VersionedObject. The application of Event-Based Modelling and Event Sourcing is still relatively novel to the LA domain. Event Sourcing ensures that all current state changes are stored as a sequence of events, enabling querying and state reconstruction. The new information system is considered futureproof, delivering improvements for deed registration times, monitoring, traceability/auditing, history management and interoperability. Further research suggestions include undertaken Domain-Driven Design in other contexts, particularly those implementing LADM.

Summary Individual land titling will not deliver land tenure security to the majority of people by 2030. Nevertheless, tenure security is implicit to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and deep-rooted in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Land tenure security underpins the SDGs related to poverty reduction, food security, disaster risk management and gender equality. The cross-cutting benefits of land tenure security with regards to sustainable development suggests equally cross-cutting conceptual frameworks, management cooperation and data sharing are needed within, and between, those sectors. Additionally, previous research in the land administration domain developed approaches, frameworks and data models linking across different domains. This latter achievement showed how developments using standardised modelling approaches and domain terminologies can be used to support gathering, organising and disseminating information relevant to reporting on and monitoring of the SDGs. From the perspective of data sharing, domain models - such as the Land Administration Domain Model LADM (ISO 19152), a globally recognized standard - are seen as supporting this capability. In response, this paper explores whether and how LADM, in terms of data model additions and adaptations, could support other SDG-relevant domains. The approach used is exploratory, including elements of literature review, case study analysis, conceptual data modelling, and synthesis. It shows the potential and added value of an integrated data modelling approach, with regards to Land Administration and its intrinsic feature to other fields of study including poverty reduction, food security, and gender equality.

Land reallocation is an important step of land consolidation where farmland parcels are reorganised and redistributed. Most current land reallocation approaches focus on the technical aspects, at the expense of the social, cultural, economic, and political factors which are important on customary lands. This paper develops an approach for land reallocation to support responsible land consolidation on customary lands taking these factors into consideration. Using the process model approach, we identify the key characteristics of customary land tenure and the general requirements for land reallocation of these lands; from which a land re-allocation approach is developed. This is subsequently applied to a case study in Northern Ghana. The results show that even though the approach is successful to the extent that land fragmentation (physical and legal) is significantly reduced in the study area; social land mobility, land tenure and cultural practices hinder the application of the land reallocation as this would either increase legal or physical land fragmentation.

The global land community has increasingly recognized the need to work towards practical, coordinated integration and scalable implementation of alternative approaches to land administration, ones that better serve the interests of the majority of groups in society. The pro-poor land recordation tool (PPLRT) contains a set of design elements developed to improve protection and access to land for the poor, particularly women, youth and vulnerable groups, especially in areas with (rapidly) changing land use. Building on earlier PPLRT work, this article positions the PPLRT relative to other responsible land administration approaches (especially Fit-For-Purpose). It further develops the PPLRT design elements and system based on incorporating increased foci on institutional and political economy aspects and a more complex notion of community, stemming from four documented cases of records keeping, and expert feedback. The paper recommends refinement of all but one of the design elements, addition of a new design element, and modification of the PPLRT’s graphical depiction. Recommended strategic areas for further research are: assessing the impacts of pro-poor land recordation on achievement of the SDGs (particularly land related indicator 1.4.2) and New Urban Agenda (particularly paragraph 35); identifying the necessary conditions for improved, coordinated, and scaled PPLRT implementation in various contexts; and articulation of the circumstances for effective future alignment, conversion and integration of land data collected by local communities with those of existing land administration agencies.

The well-recognized and extensive task of mapping unrecorded land rights across sub-Saharan Africa demands innovative solutions. In response, the consortia of “its4land”, a European Commission Horizon 2020 project, developed, adapted, and tested innovative geospatial tools including (1) software underpinned by the smart Sketch maps concept, called SmartSkeMa, (2) a workflow for applying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and (3) a boundary delineator tool based on the UAV images. Additionally, the consortium developed (4) a platform called Publish and Share (PaS), enabling integration of all the outputs of tool sharing and publishing of land information through geocloud web services. The individual tools were developed, tested, and demonstrated based on requirements from Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Zanzibar. The platform was further tested by key informants and experts in a workshop in Rwanda after the AfricaGIS conference in 2019. With the project concluding in 2020, this paper seeks to undertake an assessment of the tools and the PaS platform against the elements of fit-for-purpose land administration. The results show that while the tools can function and deliver outputs independently and reliably, PaS enables interoperability by allowing them to be combined and integrated into land administration workflows. This feature is useful for tailoring approaches for specific country contexts. In this regard, developers of technical approaches tackling land administration issues are further encouraged to include interoperability and the use of recognized standards in designs.

The administration of land tenure, value, and use is undergoing a new wave of technological innovation [...]

A contemporary review of land administration, from the perspective of systems maintenance, is provided. A special emphasis is placed on emerging fit-for-purpose land administration solutions. The research synthesis uses reputable sources from the contemporary era. Results show the challenges of maintaining land administration systems and the data held are long recognized. The 1970s–1980s gave the issue impetus as data and processes moved from paper-based and manual to digital and automated. The 1990s recognized concerns on maintenance, albeit as a secondary issue: system establishment was the primary concern. The 2000s placed more emphasis on more holistic sociotechnical systems but, again maintenance was supplementary. The fit-for-purpose era deliveres a vast range of new social and technological innovations; however, scaled and sustainable implementations still struggle with system maintenance. From the findings, a consolidated model for analyzing maintenance problems and solutions at jurisdictional level is developed. Maintenance of a land administration system can be understood by identifying the level of change, method for change, components to change, and options for what to change to. The United Nations-endorsed Framework for Effective Land Administration is then used to identify specific maintenance challenges and available solutions. It is suggested that due to the scope and size of what can be considered maintenance issues, there exists no single solution—instead the country should identify its persistant maintenance problems, and the most appropriate solution set from the suite of available options. Emerging solutions and challenges include ensuring interlinkage to maintenance of spatial planning, land valuation, and marine administration; exploiting survey data ‘back capture’ initiatives; supporting grassroots IT; and giving serious attention to cybersecurity concerns.

Contemporary global policy development is increasingly shaped through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In parallel, the United Nations initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) plays a leading role in the development and diffusion of policy frameworks with regard to geospatial information. Specifically, two frameworks, the Framework for Effective Land Administration (FELA) and the Strategic Framework for Geoinformation Services for Disaster (SFGISD), are under development to tackle global issues in relation to tenure security and natural disasters. In order to harmoniously diffuse those global goals and frameworks into national laws and regulations, and to local community initiatives and policies, policy transfer is required to occur between governance layers. This paper seeks to assess ‘whether’ and ‘how’ this policy transfer occurs, focusing specifically on identifying limitations and its opportunities for its enhancement. Results reveal that the approach so far used for policy transfer is taking conventional institutional means to do this in both domains land administration and disaster risk management (DRM) domains. There appears to be an opportunity to utilize a networked approach instead of the conventional institutional for a more robust and further-reaching uptake of the policies. This could also give space to provide better mechanisms for feeding results from local level initiatives and successes into the global frameworks.

Disaster prevention, response and recovery require information about land tenure. Though, in many high-risk contexts, such records are non-existent or not up to date. As a result, vulnerable groups are often passed over by the government during risk management activities. At present there exists no dedicated tool for supporting land tenure recordation of all people-to-land relationships for the purposes of disaster risk management. More specifically, the required supportive data models and standards that could enable integration of concepts from the respective domains of land administration and disaster risk management are also lacking. Standardized data models could support software and service designs. This paper introduces a model linking the domains of land administration and disaster risk management – with the goal of supporting resilience against natural disasters and providing an approach for collecting data once, and using it multiple times. A design approach was used to develop the model – with adaption of the international Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) standard acting as a basis. Key features of the model include the support of interoperability through standardisation, the inclusion of all people-to-land relationships including those specific to disaster contexts, and the potential of the model to contribute to each of the disaster phases. The model is suggested to be highly applicable in natural disaster contexts where no land tenure information exists or the national mapping authority already uses a land administration system compatible with LADM. Overall, the model is considered as a step toward an implementable strategy for applying responsible land administration in the context of disaster risk management.

Conventionally, land administration—incorporating cadastres and land registration—uses ground-based survey methods. This approach can be traced over millennia. The application of photogrammetry and remote sensing is understood to be far more contemporary, only commencing deeper into the 20th century. This paper seeks to counter this view, contending that these methods are far from recent additions to land administration: successful application dates back much earlier, often complementing ground-based methods. Using now more accessible historical works, made available through archive digitisation, this paper presents an enriched and more complete synthesis of the developments of photogrammetric methods and remote sensing applied to the domain of land administration. Developments from early phototopography and aerial surveys, through to analytical photogrammetric methods, the emergence of satellite remote sensing, digital cameras, and latterly lidar surveys, UAVs, and feature extraction are covered. The synthesis illustrates how debates over the benefits of the technique are hardly new. Neither are well-meaning, although oft-flawed, comparative analyses on criteria relating to time, cost, coverage, and quality. Apart from providing this more holistic view and a timely reminder of previous work, this paper brings contemporary practical value in further demonstrating to land administration practitioners that remote sensing for data capture, and subsequent map production, are an entirely legitimate, if not essential, part of the domain. Contemporary arguments that the tools and approaches do not bring adequate accuracy for land administration purposes are easily countered by the weight of evidence. Indeed, these arguments may be considered to undermine the pragmatism inherent to the surveying discipline, traditionally an essential characteristic of the profession. That said, it is left to land administration practitioners to determine the relevance of these methods for any specific country context.

Remotely sensed data is increasingly applied across many domains, including fit-for-purpose land administration (FFPLA), where the focus is on fast, affordable, and accurate property information collection. Property valuation, as one of the main functions of land administration systems, is influenced by locational, physical, legal, and economic factors. Despite the importance of property valuation to economic development, there are often no standardized rules or strict data requirements for property valuation for taxation in developing contexts, such as Rwanda. This study aims at assessing different remote sensing data in support of developing a new approach for property valuation for taxation in Rwanda; one that aligns with the FFPLA philosophy. Three different remote sensing technologies, (i) aerial images acquired with a digital camera, (ii) WorldView2 satellite images, and (iii) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images obtained with a DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus quadcopter, are compared and analyzed in terms of their fitness to fulfil the requirements for valuation for taxation purposes. Quantitative and qualitative methods are applied for the comparative analysis. Prior to the field visit, the fundamental concepts of property valuation for taxation and remote sensing were reviewed. In the field, reference data using high precision GNSS (Leica) was collected and used for quantitative assessment. Primary data was further collected via semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The results show that UAVs have the highest potential for collecting data to support property valuation for taxation. The main reasons are the prime need for accurate-enough and up-to-date information. The comparison of the different remote sensing techniques and the provided new approach can support land valuers and professionals in the field in bottom-up activities following the FFPLA principles and maintaining the temporal quality of data needed for fair taxation.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) may facilitate the implementation of fit-for-purpose land administration (FFPLA), however, the approach can be compromised when funding for land registration is insufficient or donor projects end. This paper aims to introduce a new form of PPP to the literature on FFPLA, further extending the discourse and options available on PPPs for FFPLA. A background review finds that whilst PPPs have had long standing application in land administration, there is room to explore approaches that seek increased involvement of non-conventional land sector actors. A case study methodology is applied to analyse recent developments of FFPLA in Côte d’Ivoire that includes a partnership between the government and a consortium of private sector companies. Results describe the novelty, challenges, opportunities, and success factors for the approach, when compared to existing forms of PPPs. It is found that the innovative partnership approach may create novel avenues for financing FFPLA in developing countries and for more active forms of participation of the private sector in improved land tenure governance. The model potentially creates sustainable buy-in from private sector corporations, who whilst not conventionally closely undertaking land administration efforts, rely intrinsically on it to achieve corporate social responsibility objectives.

Land consolidation is argued as a tool for increasing food security. However, past attempts to consolidate Sub-Saharan Africa's rural customary lands disregarded the existing land tenure system, and actually undermined food security: land fragmentation, which supported the traditional farming system, was not considered a problem, and more importantly, the projects merely attempted to transfer Western European land consolidation without taking local conditions into account. In response, this study aims to identify the factors that need to be understood when developing a land consolidation strategy for the specific case of Ghana's rural customary lands. The determining factors when selecting a land consolidation strategy are identified for three countries with existing land consolidation strategies: The Netherlands, Lithuania, and Rwanda. Subsequently, these are set against Ghana, which has no land consolidation strategy, but has customary lands. It is found that certain determining factors in Ghana - such as the state of the economy, and the farming technology - matched with the strategies of other countries. However, other factors including: the government support; the prior existence of conventional land markets; an individual land tenure system; and the coverage of a functioning land information system – were all absent in Ghana. The study concludes that the factors that differ require ways to be addressed and adapted in order to develop a responsible land consolidation strategy for Ghana's customary areas.

Accelerating the process of land registration is a key issue in emerging countries like Indonesia. However, existing methods – typically based around terrestrial measurements for surveying and mapping activities – are slow-paced and entail decades more work to ensure completion. Increasing demand for information about land tenure and use inspires the development of fit-for-purpose approaches. Emerging technologies such as Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAVs) are potentially a worthy alternative for enabling swifter, cheaper – yet still appropriately accurate – land data acquisition. This research seeks to evaluate the use of UAV technology for cadastral boundary data acquisition processes in Indonesia. After a comprehensive review of requisites for cadastral boundary data survey and UAV regulation in Indonesia, various requirement elements were derived to design a UAV-image based approach. The designed approach utilizes UAV derived imagery capture and participatory boundary mapping methods for the boundary delineation. By comparison with the existing terrestrial method, and evaluating against fit-for-purpose criteria, the UAV based image approach showed a higher perceived involvement of the community and` indicated an improvement in cost efficiency, decreased duration, resulted in a high accuracy UAV ortho-photo, and adequate spatial descriptions of boundaries.

Fit-for-purpose land administration aims to align cadastral policies, administration and technology selection with the prevailing societal needs and capacity within a country context. It seeks to support delivery of more rapid and low-cost cadastral boundary mapping – and ultimately more widespread land tenure security. The philosophy suggests that when high positional accuracies are not the primary concern, but when time pressure is, high-resolution satellite images can serve as a source for creating cadastral boundary information. This paper explores the potential of mean-shift segmentation plug-in in QGIS to semi-automatically extract cadastral boundaries in rural areas – based on the land cover information from WorldView-2 satellite images. The segmentation gives a vector file satisfying many cadastral boundary requirements and ready to be used in a GIS environment. The buffer overlay method was used to assess the quality of extracted boundaries. For a non-vegetated terrain having visible boundaries, the approach could be taken as an alternative to support existing, relatively slow, boundary mapping approaches by minimizing the effects of manual digitization and surveying.

•Motivation for research in the domain of 3D Land Administration•Explanation on terminology 3D Cadastres - 3D Land Administration•FIG 3D Cadastres 2018 Workshop as initial start of the papers in the special issue•Role of ISO 19152 LADM, and its revision in the context of 3D Land Administration•Short introduction to each of the sixteen papers in the special issue

The objective to fast-track the mapping and registration of large numbers of unrecorded land rights globally has led to the experimental application of Artificial Intelligence in the domain of land administration, and specifically the application of automated visual cognition techniques for cadastral mapping tasks. In this research, we applied and compared the ability of rule-based systems within Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA), as opposed to human analysis, to extract visible cadastral boundaries from very high-resolution World View-2 images, in both rural and urban settings. From our experiments, machine-based techniques were able to automatically delineate a good proportion of rural parcels with explicit polygons where the correctness of the automatically extracted boundaries was 47.4% against 74.24% for humans and the completeness of 45% for the machine compared to 70.4% for humans. On the contrary, in the urban area, automatic results were counterintuitive: even though urban plots and buildings are clearly marked with visible features such as fences, roads and tacitly perceptible to eyes, automation resulted in geometrically and topologically poorly structured data. Thus, these could neither be geometrically compared with human digitisation, nor actual cadastral data from the field. The results of this study provide an updated snapshot with regards to the performance of contemporary machine-driven feature extraction techniques compared to conventional manual digitising. In our methodology, using an iterative approach of segmentation and classification, we demonstrated how to overcome the weaknesses of having undesirable segments due to intra-parcel and inter-parcel variability, when using segmentation approaches for cadastral feature delineation. We also demonstrated how we can easily implement a geometric comparison framework within the Esri&rsquo, s ArcGIS software environment and firmly believe the developed methodology can be reproduced.

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are emerging as a tool for alternative land tenure data acquisition. Even though UAS appear to represent a promising technology, it remains unclear to what extent they match the needs of communities and governments in the land sector. This paper responds to this question by undertaking a socio-technical study in Rwanda, aiming to determine the match between stakeholders’ needs and the characteristics of the UAS data acquisition workflow and its final products as valuable spatial data for land administration and spatial planning. A needs assessment enabled the expression of a range of land information needs across multiple levels and stakeholder sectors. Next to the social study, three different UAS were flown to test not only the quality of data but the possibilities of the use of this technology within the current institutional environment. A priority list of needs for cadastral and non-cadastral information as well as insights into operational challenges and data quality measures of UAS-based data products are presented. It can be concluded that UAS can have a significant contribution to match most of the prioritized needs in Rwanda. However, the results also reveal that structural and capacity conditions currently undermine this potential.

There exists an intensifying and multifaceted relationship between rapid population growth, the increasing occurrence of natural disasters, and demands for land tenure security. Consequently, there is growing agreement on the need to adopt pro-poor land administration approaches, ones that better address the needs of the poor living in disaster prone contexts. Vulnerable communities and exposed lands could benefit from emerging pro-poor land administration, however, thus far, application of the pro-poor mind-set has gained minimal traction in the disaster risk management agenda. Using a research synthesis, existing evidence is analysed and consolidated, and a new inclusive conceptual framework is built; one that illustrates the underutilised potential for pro-poor land administration in disaster risk management. The developed framework explains the interactions between three identified and fundamental global change forces (people, land and disaster) and the three disaster risk drivers (vulnerability, exposure and hazard). The framework illustrates how pro-poor approaches can simultaneously have impacts on both land tenure security and disaster risk management. The conceptual framework is considered a first step toward an implementable strategy for applying pro-poor land administration technologies in the context of disaster risk management. Ultimately, pro-poor land administration should enable the poor to minimise vulnerabilities and disaster risks through an inclusive land tenure security approach to prevent, mitigate, prepare and respond to natural disasters.

Urbanization and the trend towards complex infrastructure development challenges the traditional two-dimensional (2D) cadastral representations used in conventional land administration. Three-dimensional (3D) representations are argued to serve as the future basis upon which to spatially define rights, restrictions and responsibilities (RRRs) in these environments. In Delhi, the capital city of India, where horizontal expansion via new settlements in peri-urban areas, and vertical expansion by densification of city infrastructure, are both prevalent, the need to manage this increasingly complex 3D infrastructure environment presents a great challenge for land administration and management agencies. This paper explores both the current and potential future application of 3D representation in Delhi, with respect to land use planning, development and management. A cross-cutting thematic case study analysis is undertaken: policy drivers, legal frameworks, organizational aspects, and technical standards are considered. For each aspect a separate analytical approach is used. Based on the results, it is concluded that current practices related to 3D representation are somewhat immature and not adequate for capturing the future vertical growth of Delhi. This could lead to legal and physical boundary inconsistencies and irregularities, and dispute cases. However, by learning from international developments and standards-based approaches, agencies have the potential to enhance and support processes in their respective land administration systems. To realize this potential, internal and external policies, institutional settings and, technical and financial arrangements need to be reformed. In the short term it is recommended to focus on raising awareness for the widespread adoption of 3D representations in relevant agencies in Delhi.

This paper presents the results from a quality and usability analysis of participatory land registration (PaLaR) in Indonesia’s rural areas, focusing on data quality, cost, and time. PaLaR was designed as a systematic community-centered land titling project collecting requisite spatial and legal data. PaLaR was piloted in two communities situated in Tanggamus and Grobogan districts in Indonesia. The research compared spatial data accuracy between two approaches, PaLaR and the normal systematic land registration approach (PTSL) with respect to point accuracy and polygon area. Supplementary observations and interviews were undertaken in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the spatial and legal data collection, as well as logical consistency of the data collected by the community committee, using a mobile application. Although the two pilots showed a lower spatial accuracy than the normal method (PTSL), PaLaR better suited local circumstances and still delivered complete spatial and legal data in a more effective means. The accuracy and efficiency of spatial data collection could be improved through the use of more accurate GNSS antennas and a seamless connection to the national land databases. The PaLaR method is dependent on, amongst other aspects, inclusive and flexible community awareness programs, as well as the committed participation of the community and local offices.

In this paper, we develop a framework for an approach that assigns values to customary rural farmland parcels based on the local people’s view of land value to support land consolidation. In a case study of Nanton, Ghana, key land value factors were identified and weighted by the local community. The weights were integrated into the framework that produced a Land Value Index for each farmland parcel. Though the strength of the approach is found in scenario and sensitivity analyses. However, the prime weakness of this framework is that it is more expensive to use than automatic valuation models.

Climate change challenges mountain communities to prepare themselves via Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) plans that reduce vulnerability. This paper outlines the evaluation of a developed web-based information system to support CBA, referred to as a Mountain Community Adaptive System (MCAS). The web-based user interface visualizes collated data from data providers, integrating it with near real-time climate and weather datasets. The interface provides more up-to-date information than was previously available on the environment, particularly on land and climate. MCAS, a cloud-based Land Information System (LIS), was developed using an Agile-inspired approach offering system creation based on bare minimum system requirements and iterative development. The system was tested against Fit-For-Purpose Land Administration (FFP LA) criteria to assess the effectiveness in a case from Nepal. The results illustrate that an MCAS-style system can provide useful information such as land use status, adaptation options, near real-time rainfall and temperature details, amongst others, to enable services that can enhance CBA activities. The information can facilitate improved CBA planning and implementation at the mountain community level. Despite the mentioned benefits of MCAS, ensuring system access was identified as a key limitation: smartphones and mobile technologies still remain prohibitively expensive for members of mountain communities, and underlying information communication technology (ICT) infrastructures remain under-developed in the assessed mountain communities. The results of the evaluation further suggest that the land-related aspects of climate change should be added to CBA initiatives. Similarly, existing LIS could have functionalities extended to include climate-related variables that impact on land use, tenure, and development.

Community-based Adaptation Programs (CAPs) that involve the participation of communities are being actively promoted in mountainous areas. These areas are climate sensitive and are often heavily influenced by landslides, floods, and drought. This research indicates that designers of adaptation programs seek to develop and implement CAPs based on international viewpoint and their obligations, but not community requirements. Such CAPs create uneven access to information resources for communities and do not implicitly reduce community vulnerability. In response, the research proposes the establishment of an Information System (IS) to support delivery of reliable climate adaptation services to mountain communities. This research uses Nepal as a case study that experiences a lack of effective adaptation programs due to its varied topography, prevalent climate-related disasters, and barriers in capacity building and institutional development. The results of the analyses indicate that the national level focuses on preparing adaptation action plans, whilst district levels and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) focus on facilitating adaptation implementation for community and individuals. Additionally, the results reveal that an IS can enhance the design and implementation of CAP. Finally, the results are used to articulate prioritized services for an IS to assist communities who are in the greatest need of climate service delivery.

In many countries, authority for maintaining records of land ownership lies with national or state institutes, called 'cadastres' or 'land registries'. The emergence of volunteered geographic information (VGI) and crowdsourcing potentially challenges this state based authority, enabling the construction of 'neo'-cadastres (using the analogy of 'neo'geography). Individual citizens can themselves map and record land tenure rights. This paper explores if and how VGI and crowdsourcing may redefine the state based cadastres and land registries, and the roles of land users who claim land rights outside of the state based institutions. Using theories of institutions and isomorphism we hypothesise that a parallel exists between emerging open systems and situations where no state-based cadastre exists: participants in both situations will position themselves to protect their interests. Three cases from Ghana, Canada, and Indonesia demonstrate how land users indicate their land tenure right boundaries based on personal views (the neo-cadastre), rather than on rules stipulated by a national authority (the traditional cadastre). In each case land users root their behaviour partly in local dependency relations and social advocacy networks. These locally embedded rules may not necessarily coincide with hierarchical institutional relations. Even in participatory adjudication activities conducted under the authority of national cadastres, land users are not completely free in providing their land boundaries. Instead, they adhere to certain locally embedded microsocial conventions. We conclude that VGI and crowdsourced based neo-cadastres will likely redefine, from passive to active, the roles of land users in cadastres. This creates an opportunity for citizens, but also a potential risk. Where implicit rules of the neo-cadastre do not co-evolve with traditional cadastral institutions, conflicts of land information and access to land may emerge. Neo-cadastres will be an artefact of this dissatisfaction, and may reflect new directions for cadastral institutions. Neo-cadastres will not be a direct trigger for wider cadastral change, but a piece of evidence that change and resistance are occurring

Urban land has social and spatial dimensions. Governance of urban land should consider these dimensions. Existing methods of evaluating land governance tend to focus on the social dimensions: the spatial dimensions are considered less. A socio-spatial approach developed here is argued to fill this gap. This research supposes that informal settlements can be used to understand urban land governance. A conceptual framework that links urban land governance, socio-spatial dimensions and informal settlements is developed and tested through a case study. The results show that the socio-spatial methodology improved understanding of equity, efficiency and transparency as compared with the existing approaches which are solely based on poor-quality and unreliable data. This methodology can be used beyond informal settlements such as understanding infrastructural delivery and quality, mapping potential conflict areas and urban land uses where governance plays a great role. Overall, the socio-spatial methodology enabled an all-encompassing evaluation of urban land governance

Literature on urban land governance suggests cadastres play an important role in delivering equal land access, adequate tenure security, sustainable land use, accountability of actors, and transparency. Accordingly, land governance is increasingly examined through the domain of cadastres, or more broadly land administration. In Ethiopia, urban cadastres are yet to be studied through this lens. This paper examines the evolution of Ethiopia's urban cadastres in support of urban land governance across three governing regimes: the Imperial, the Military, and the Ethiopian People Republic Democratic Front (EPRDF) regimes. Three data collection techniques are applied: research synthesis is used to understand the nature and role of Ethiopia's urban cadastres during the Imperial and Military regimes, whilst secondary data and primary observational analysis are used to assess the early and contemporary parts of EPRDF regime respectively. The recognized cadastral ‘toolbox’ approach informs the analysis: the comparative role of cadastres in delivering urban land governance across the three study epochs is assessed. The study reveals that during the Imperial and Military regimes, policies and legal frameworks afforded less consideration to important aspects of urban land governance. Meanwhile, results from the early EPRDF regime suggest that whilst urban land governance discourse was popular, the operational role of the urban cadastre in improving urban land governance was limited: the basic requirements needed for the operation of urban cadastres, including political steadiness, policy and legal clarity, technical capacity, sound organizational design and societal support were missing. The contemporary situation shows improvement, however, each ‘toolbox’ element has improvement opportunities.

Many developing countries have witnessed the urgent need of accelerating cadastral surveying processes. Previous studies found that large portions of cadastral boundaries coincide with visible physical objects, namely roads, fences, and building walls. This research explores the application of airborne laser scanning (ALS) techniques on cadastral surveys. A semi-automated workflow is developed to extract cadastral boundaries from an ALS point clouds. Firstly, a two-phased workflow was developed that focused on extracting digital representations of physical objects. In the automated extraction phase, after classifying points into semantic components, the outline of planar objects such as building roofs and road surfaces were generated by an α-shape algorithm, whilst the centerlines delineatiation approach was fitted into the lineate object—a fence. Afterwards, the extracted vector lines were edited and refined during the post-refinement phase. Secondly, we quantitatively evaluated the workflow performance by comparing results against an exiting cadastral map as reference. It was found that the workflow achieved promising results: around 80% completeness and 60% correctness on average, although the spatial accuracy is still modest. It is argued that the semi-automated extraction workflow could effectively speed up cadastral surveying, with both human resources and equipment costs being reduced.

Land information is one of the basic requirements for land management activities such as land consolidation. However, the dearth of land information on customary lands limits the development and application of land consolidation. This paper presents and discusses the results of an experiment carried out to test the potential of participatory land administration applied on customary lands in support of land consolidation. A brief overview of the evolution of crowdsourced, voluntary, and participatory approaches is provided alongside newly related insights into neogeography and neo-cadastre, and fit-for-purpose and pro-poor land administration. The concept of participatory land administration is then developed in this context. The area of the experiment is in Northern Ghana where the process was developed together with the local farming community. The study involved collecting land information relating to farms over a two-week period, using a mobile app and a satellite image, based on participatory land administration. The results show that Participatory Land Administration can potentially support land consolidation, though further investigation is needed on how it can be integrated into the formal land registration system, into an actual land consolidation project.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide a flexible and low-cost solution for the acquisition of high-resolution data. The potential of high-resolution UAV imagery to create and update cadastral maps is being increasingly investigated. Existing procedures generally involve substantial fieldwork and many manual processes. Arguably, multiple parts of UAV-based cadastral mapping workflows could be automated. Specifically, as many cadastral boundaries coincide with visible boundaries, they could be extracted automatically using image analysis methods. This study investigates the transferability of gPb contour detection, a state-of-the-art computer vision method, to remotely sensed UAV images and UAV-based cadastral mapping. Results show that the approach is transferable to UAV data and automated cadastral mapping: object contours are comprehensively detected at completeness and correctness rates of up to 80%. The detection quality is optimal when the entire scene is covered with one orthoimage, due to the global optimization of gPb contour detection. However, a balance between high completeness and correctness is hard to achieve, so a combination with area-based segmentation and further object knowledge is proposed. The localization quality exhibits the usual dependency on ground resolution. The approach has the potential to accelerate the process of general boundary delineation during the creation and updating of cadastral maps.

UAVs-unmanned aerial vehicles-facilitate data acquisition at temporal and spatial scales that still remain unachievable for traditional remote sensing platforms. However, current legal frameworks that regulate UAVs present significant barriers to research and development. To highlight the importance, impact, and diversity of UAV regulations, this paper provides an exploratory investigation of UAV regulations on the global scale. For this, the methodological approach consists of a research synthesis of UAV regulations, including a thorough literature review and a comparative analysis of national regulatory frameworks. Similarities and contrasting elements in the various national UAV regulations are explored including their statuses from the perspectives of past, present, and future trends. Since the early 2000s, countries have gradually established national legal frameworks. Although all UAV regulations have one common goal-minimizing the risks to other airspace users and to both people and property on the ground-the results reveal distinct variations in all the compared variables. Furthermore, besides the clear presence of legal frameworks, market forces such as industry design standards and reliable information about UAVs as public goods are expected to shape future developments.

The strategies of participants in housing production, in developing countries, are diverse and not fully understood. Governments in most developing countries have not been able to, sufficiently, explore how the production factors: land, labour and capital, impact on housing production. As a result, many policies formulated by governments aimed at stimulating housing production are found to result in unintended outcomes: they do not always align with the way housing is actually created. This study uses the production factors to assess how motivations are shaped and different modes of housing production result. The aim is to gain an improved understanding of how housing developers, builders and government, impact modes of production. The method includes synthesis of past studies on factors of housing production in Lagos. In parallel, it also involves visits and interviews with some selected developers and agencies to allow a deeper engagement with their activities. This is in addition to direct observation and interviews undertaken through purposeful selection of some autonomous (on-site) builders. As an exploratory study, it observes that a better approach to land supply is significantly beneficial in shaping the modes and capacity of housing. The study helps understand the strategies of participants in housing production in developing countries, especially in Lagos. It recommends that efficient land supply to the autonomous on-site builders should be a focus for policy makers. This will contribute to the production of more housing thereby facilitating an improved production of present and future housing needs of the population.

Existing knowledge reveals that land as a resource is not currently managed efficiently and effectively in most countries of the world. One of the factors considered important in understanding the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness is the level of integration between agencies. The objective of this paper is to determine the level of this inefficiency in order to improve our understanding of the inter-relationship between agencies that perform land administration functions. The research methods include a synthesis of past studies and the use of case study approach. It uses as context, Lagos, in Nigeria. This approach involves a mixed method: interviews and online survey. The results revealed limited integration of processes and collaboration of agencies in the management of land for housing production. We conclude that policies are not sufficiently informed by data and there is a noticeable disconnection between agencies, and formulated policies.