An open source software solution for land records management in developing nations

1
An open source software solution for land records
management in developing nations
Geoff Hay, G. Brent Hall, Michael G. Leahy, David
Goodwin, Don McKinnon and Gertrude Pieper School
of Surveying
2
Introduction

• Context developing nations, role of the
  international organizations
• LADM and cathedral style applications
• The OSCAR model and prototype demo

3
Context

• Initiative for this project came from the Land
  Tenure Group of the Food and Agricultural
  Organization (FAO) of the United Nations  
• The FAO-Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS)
  cadastre and land registration initiative started
  in 2007 with an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) in
  Rome
• Considered that the use of FLOSS for cadastre and
  land registration could be beneficial to many
  developing countries

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Typical issues

• Paper based systems
• Land registration spread across multiple
  government organisations
• Cultural aspects (traditional land ownership,
  freehold versus lease, etc)
• Lost or destroyed data, incomplete or confounded
  data
• Lack of human resources especially in information
  technology
• Lack of funding

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Specific goals for project

• Perform a high level conceptual analysis and
  design and preliminary development of a cadastral
  and land registration shell
• Include request management, editing and
  maintenance functions for a generic cadastral
  index map and cadastral records in context of
  the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM)
• Prepare a design, main milestones and a tentative
  budget for a FAO-administered sustainable FLOSS
  product for cadastre and land registration and
  establish an international support community

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cont

• Basic guiding principles of
• Simplicity, functionality and adaptability
• Ease of implementation, use and maintenance
• Cost effectiveness
• Availability and extensibility
• Allow interaction between multiple levels of an
  organisation, each of which supply and maintain
  various forms of land registration data
• Create value-added production chains
• Must encompass temporal aspects of change

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OSCAR project

• Basic questions
• Do we need to analyse and hard-code every
  possible type within a cadastral system (e.g.
  documents, people, rights, responsibilities and
  restrictions etc) for every country?
• Are we trying to force countries to conform?
• Do we need to analyse all the possible usage
  scenarios, workflows, for every country?
• Large complex systems are monumental
• Expensive (effort), difficult to change/maintain
  (brittle), and the owner is locked in (closed)

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Simple conceptual model
OSCAR is based upon a very simple conceptual
model that eveyone can understand
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Conceptual model

• Instruments (documents) are the central feature
  of OSCAR
• Documents are ordered in both time and space
• May be as simple as an inscription on a rock or
  as complex as a hand painted map
• History is important with cadastral records
• Who owned this land last year?
• What restrictions previously existed for this
  land before it was subdivided?
• Did the nature of the title change and if so when
  and why?

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cont.

• Processes are also important
• What is the current status of this parcels
  subdivision?
• What are the steps required for creating a new
  parcel?
• What processes are behind the current state?
• Why was this changed?
• Instruments, history and processes can be
  captured by modeling workflows
• Workflows vary between countries, but relate to a
  global ontology that can be supplemented with
  specific ontologies

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Assumptions

• A temporal model is required and must be
  fundamental to the software design
• All components of workflows are event-driven,
  hence the model is an event model rather than a
  state model
• All documents associated with workflow events
• Every change to the parcel fabric is associated
  with an instrument (a document) and an event
• Documents, once closed, are immutable
• Understanding of the domain should be encoded
  separately in a way that is machine
  understandable - not be encoded in the database
  model and software

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How the requirements are met

• The database manages the connection between
  spatial data and the registry data but does not
  store any registry data itself
• Documents are stored within a digital library as
  resource description framework (RDF) resources
• Domain understanding is encoded in an ontology
  (also as RDF resources)
• All modifications to data are made within the
  context of a workflow process

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Advantages of the architecture

• OSCAR requires developers and users to have very
  little prior knowledge of the general domain and
  no knowledge of the specific domain
• The implementation of a specific country solution
  can be managed by workflow processes
• Database data model is very simple 10 tables
• Highly adaptable and language independent
• Flexible via locally relevant and needed plug-ins
  within the general workbench SDK

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cont.

• Modifying document templates, changing attribute
  names, changing workflows, etc dont require
  modifications to the database model and/or
  software
• The global and specific ontologies are emergent
• Global data model allows data interchange and
  semantic searching even some degree of language
  independence
• Foundation of the architecture is use of the
  approach pioneered in the semantic Web by W3C

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Resource description framework (RDF)
Allows registry applications to be treated as
cases of the semantic Web via use of Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URIs) to form a graph
structure of the database Things being described
have properties, which have values
subjects, predicates and objects.
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Uses Eclipse rich client platform (RCP)

• Forms the foundation of the OSCAR workbench SDK
• Operating system independent
• Standalone and Web-ready for easy deployment
• Plug-in model highly decoupled architecture
• Large set of available plug-ins
• Steep learning curve but levels off
• Very large developer community

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More information

• A project wiki has been created and is maintained
  at the following URL
• http//source.otago.ac.nz/oscar/OSCAR_Home
• Acknowledgement We wish to acknowledge the
  support of Mika Törhönen and the Land Tenure
  Group of the FAO.