Search Results (3)

The urban land administration system (LAS) of any country serves as a key pillar for good governance, resource planning, service delivery, infrastructure development, and revenue collection. To reform their LASs, countries need a thorough understanding of their existing context and global relevance. The goal of this paper is to examine the status and challenges of urban LASs in Pakistan using the United Nations Framework for Effective Land Administration (FELA). The exploratory case study method used in the paper employs a mixed approach, which includes FELA-based questionnaire surveys, group discussions, and desk reviews. A total of 525 urban LAS stakeholders, including owner-buyers, real estate agents, bankers, lawyers, and LAS organizations, participated in the activity. The results show that more than half of the stakeholders are not satisfied with existing urban LASs, their governance and accountability, laws, and policies. Corruption is prevalent mostly in government organizations. Fraud and joint ownership are the most common sources of dispute, with 67 percent of the respondents stating that the cases take more than two years to resolve in court. The financial aspect of urban LASs is suffering due to property undervaluation and low revenue collection. Manual data and record keeping in LASs further complicate the system, with 87 percent of all respondents interested in innovating the urban LAS using modern technologies. Furthermore, 92 percent of all respondents expressed the need to standardize the existing LASs. There is a lack of capacity and skills, and 89 percent of organizations’ respondents believe that human resources skilled in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) can improve the efficiency of urban LASs. There is a lack of partnership among LAS organizations and a gap in the accessibility of LAS-related quality information. The country’s vision of building smart cities can be realized through LAS standardization and 3D and GIS innovation. Full article

Digital cadastral maps with accompanying land-related attributes have become a fundamental dataset for many application fields, e.g., spatial planning and development, protecting state lands, securing of land tenure, facilitating land reforms, agriculture, forestry, land management, taxation, etc. In order to fulfil its main objectives, cadastral data needs to be available and accessible, which is, among the others, emphasized also within the United Nations Framework for Effective Land Administration (FELA). This is not only important on the national level but also beyond, including at the European level where use cases and consequently demand for pan-European data sets have evolved in recent years. In order to satisfy these needs, several initiatives regarding cadastral and other geospatial data have been launched in the last 20 years. It started with the Permanent Committee on Cadastre in the European Union, the European Land Information Service, INSPIRE, UN-GGIM Europe and recent European policies on open data and high-value datasets. Our main question is, did those initiatives result in the possibility of building a cadastral map of Europe or not? Is it possible to create a cadastral map of Europe on the desktop or an open online GIS application? Within the paper, we take the opportunity to reflect on the development and implementation of European spatial data infrastructure (INSPIRE) with the main focus on the availability and accessibility of cadastral data. We also take into consideration other European initiatives related to cadastral data. The overall findings show that there is still work to be carried out. Technological developments and recent policy initiatives will certainly be drivers for future improvement. Full article

During the last decade, the production of geospatial information has increased considerably; however, managing and sharing this information has become increasingly difficult for the organizations that produce it, because it comes from different data sources and has a wide variety of users. In this sense, to have a better use of geospatial information, several countries have developed national spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) to improve access, visualization, and integration of their data and in turn, have the need to cooperate with other countries to develop regional SDIs, which allow better decision making with regional impact. However, its design and development plan requires, as a starting point, to knowing the level of development of the national SDIs to identify the strengths and gaps that exist in the region. This document presents the methodology developed and the results obtained from the evaluation of the status of implementation of the SDI components in each of the member countries of the Regional Committee of United Nations on Global Geospatial Information Management for the Americas (UN-GGIM: Americas), which will contribute to the equal development of SDIs in an integrated and collaborative way in the Americas. Full article