In response to constraints to the spread of participatory geographical information systems articulated at the 2005 conference on Mapping for Change, the EU-ACP Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) conceived this Training Kit in partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
A Land Information System is a tool for legal, administrative and economic decision-making and an aid for planning and development. A land information system consists, on the one hand, of a database containing spatially referenced land-related data for a defined area and, on the other, of procedures and techniques for the systematic collection, updating, processing and distribution of the data. The base of a land information system is a uniform spatial referencing system, which also simplifies the linking of data within the system with other land-related data.