Fit-for-purpose inspired approaches to land tenure recordation are being developed and implemented mainly in the form of pilot projects in various countries and application contexts. These approaches combine mobile digital technologies and flexible database structures with community based approaches for capturing and managing tenure rights. We discuss 10 such initiatives.

LADM covers essential information associated components of land administration and management including those over water and elements above and below the surface of the earth. LADM standard provides an abstract conceptual model with three packages and one sub-package. LADM defined terminology for a land administration system that allows a shared explanation of different formal customary or informal tenures. The standard provides the basis for national and regional profiles and enables the combination of land management information from different sources in a coherent manner.

A fiscal registry or database is supposed to record geometric, legal, physical, economic, and environmental characteristics in relation to property units, which are subject to immovable property valuation and taxation. Apart from procedural standards, there is no internationally accepted data standard that defines the semantics of fiscal databases.

Peri-urban areas in Africa are usually dynamic with respect to land tenure. Statutory, informal and customary tenure systems often co-exist and interfere with each other. This disclosure of legal pluralism often leads to lower levels of tenure security, especially for people with low incomes. Pro-poor land administration tools have been designed to cater for the poor. The question arises whether these tools have the desired impact. This question is answered by confronting the existing tenure regimes with the pro-poor land administration tools.

Fit-for-purpose inspired approaches to land tenure recordation are being developed and implemented mainly in the form of pilot projects in various countries and application contexts. These approaches combine mobile digital technologies and flexible database structures with community based approaches for capturing and managing tenure rights. We discuss 10 such initiatives.

Sub-Saharan Africa is urbanizing rapidly, but most countries lack appropriate tools to manage their urban growth. This creates both risks and opportunities for prospective land holders, resulting in a tangle of insecure land rights and claims under multiple tenure systems. Recently, innovative land tools have been proposed and implemented to formalize land tenure. It is envisaged that tenure security for land holders will increase and in turn contribute to poverty reduction.

The Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) moved forward to the FDIS stage (FDIS = Final Draft International Standard): ISO FDIS 19152. This is the last stage before becoming an International Standard (expected in July 2012), after a four year standards development process within ISO/TC211 (Geographic Information) and six years of preparation within the FIG, while the original idea for such a standard was launched at the 2002 FIG congress in Washington D.C. This paper presents an overview of the last (sometimes minor) modifications from DIS to FDIS.

Mapping millions of unrecorded land rights in large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa remains a challenge. The results of many existing ICT-based approaches for recording these rights have often proven to be inappropriate; therefore, a new generation of tools needs to be developed to map land rights faster, cheaper, easier, and more responsible. This is the main goal of its4land, a European Commission Horizon 2020 project that aims to develop innovative tools that respond to the continuum of land rights, fit-for-purpose approach, and provide cadastral intelligence.

Land administration is essential for urban planning and Spatial Information Infrastructure (SII). Interoperability of land administration and spatial planning will determine the success of SII utilization. This information should be accessible to all member of SII, including businesses and the community. This article proposes spatial planning information as an extension of the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM), the ISO 19152:2012 in order to support spatial planning.

With an estimated 50% of global land held, used, or otherwise managed by communities, interfacing indigenous, customary, and informal land tenure systems with official land administration systems is critical to achieving universal land tenure security at a global scale. The complexity and organic nature of these tenure systems, however, makes their modelling and documentation within standard, generic land administration systems extremely difficult.