Search

The report “Land Information and Transaction Systems – State of Practise and Decision Tools for Future Investments” (prepared by Land Equity International for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, MCC/LEI) gives a very clear overview of the ongoing debate in developing Land Information Systems in developing countries with the financing and maintenance aspects. The present paper shares experiences in the fields of ICT and land administration by Kadaster International - as a case to draw attention to and learn from for future applications, specifically the need for recognize and bridge the gap between the domains of land administration (including surveying, mapping, and land law) and ICT, in terms capacity and system continuity. This paper serves to initiate a discussion to contribute to solutions from within the profession. The MCC/LEI report was the trigger and strong inspiration for this. We are trying to start a discussion. In many countries, ICT and land administration have a continuity problem. When the donor leaves, in many cases the development of ICT stagnates. With the commitment of all those involved, the question is if this can be done differently? This question is central to this paper. And: how can we secure long-term investments in ICT in land administration in environments where there is strong political will and political support to modernise the land administration?

Land Consolidation on Sub-Saharan Africa’s customary lands have generally failed for various reasons. However, with the prevalence of land fragmentation as a problem in the past two decades, there has been a new wave of land consolidation activities in the region. Land fragmentation on customary lands has two main causes—the nature of the customary land tenure system, and the somewhat linked agricultural system. Since attempts to increase food productivity on customary lands have involved fertilisation and mechanisation on the small and scattered farmlands, these approaches have fallen short of increasing food productivity. Land tenure security is further low on these lands. This study examines how a responsible land consolidation measure can be developed for customary lands to contribute to food security and land tenure security. A design research approach is used to develop a land consolidation measure for customary lands and reported here. This study concludes that though the land consolidation strategy developed is significantly able to reduce land fragmentation, both physical and land tenure, the local customs are an obstruction to the technical processes to achieve the best form of farmland structures. Hence the developed approach can contribute to land tenure and food security.

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. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Over the previous decade, the necessity of integrating policies, practices and people associated with land administration (LA) and disaster risk management (DRM) has been strongly advocated for, particularly with the escalation and increase in large-scale natural disasters. This necessity has resulted in concepts, tools, and standards for better integrating the domains. In response, recent work already conceptually links responsible LA and DRM, and further examines the call for innovative recording and enumeration approaches, through the development of an integrated LADRM model. The model can support the resilience against natural disasters and provides an approach for ‘collecting data once and using it multiple times’. Building on this, this paper identifies key blockers, opportunities, and implementation pathways. Specifically, the UNGGIM driven SFGISD and FELA frameworks are used to guide the paper, as is the LA-DRM data model itself.