The enduring relevance of a modern cadastral system

“A well-functioning land administration system is the foundation of national stability and social welfare. A government can make a thousand promises, but without an efficient cadastre, those promises remain rather hollow.” I wrote that in GIM International eight years ago and, today, I have no desire to retract a single word. If anything, the intervening years have only deepened my conviction.

Fundamentally, nothing has changed. Unclear land rights are still fuelling conflict and poverty. Rural to urban migration is still producing overpopulated settlements with little legal certainty for the inhabitants. Too many countries still lack the spatial data infrastructure needed to establish who owns what, where. Hernando de Soto’s famous provocation – “Why do we insist it will take 80 years to build land recording systems, when we could do it in 20?” – remains as relevant and uncomfortable as ever.

But what gives me genuine hope is the quality and creativity of the work to reinforce the role of high-quality location data as the backbone of any functioning cadastral system. Consider, for example, what has been achieved in Benin. The Land Administration Modernization Project, supported by the Netherlands and driven by Kadaster International, VNG and local partners, showed that ‘fit for purpose’ doesn’t mean ‘second rate’. By involving local communities, using low-budget GNSS receivers and establishing presumed ownership as a pragmatic first step, the project registered more than 450,000 parcels in a three-year timeframe, building the foundation for a nationwide digital land registry from almost nothing. Geospatial data was the engine for this effort.

Similarly, in Ghana's Western Region, a project to prepare a cadastral plan for 21,000 acres of mountainous, densely vegetated land was completed in just four months rather than the expected 20. The surveying team achieved this by putting geospatial data at the very centre of their approach. Local townsfolk were trained in Google Earth, GPS-enabled mobile apps and digital data collection tools. They navigated to boundary points using smartphones, captured parcel coordinates in the field and uploaded everything to a GIS database at the end of each working day. This is what it looks like when geospatial data is treated not as ‘nice to have’, but as the foundational layer for everything else.

The technical frontier continues to advance too. Research conducted by the University of Twente and Kadaster, presented through the CadastreVision benchmark dataset and the CadNet deep learning model, points towards a future where satellite and aerial imagery can dramatically accelerate cadastral boundary extraction, reducing manual effort, improving accuracy and bringing fit-for-purpose land administration within reach for all.

These examples remind me why I keep writing about this topic. The tools evolve, the collaborations grow more sophisticated, and the community’s understanding of what is possible expands year on year. But the underlying truth remains stubbornly constant: you cannot build a fair, prosperous and well-governed society without first knowing who holds rights to the land beneath it – and you cannot know that without solid geospatial data.

Some things are worth repeating. I believe this is one of them.