Innovative Remote Sensing Methodologies for Kenyan Land Tenure Mapping

Mila Koeva,George Ted Osewe,George Vosselman,Joep Crompvoets,Gordon Wayumba,Serene Ho,Malumbo Chipofya,Jan Sahib,Valerie Pattyn,Beatrice Chika,Robert Wayumba,Ine Buntinx,Rohan Bennett,Peter Ochieng Odwe,Christiaan Lemmen,Claudia Stöcker,Sophie Crommelinck,Jaap Zevenbergen

doi:10.3390/rs12020273

Abstract

There exists a demand for effective land administration systems that can support the protection of unrecorded land rights, thereby assisting to reduce poverty and support national development—in alignment with target 1.4 of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is estimated that only 30% of the world’s population has documented land rights recorded within a formal land administration system. In response, we developed, adapted, applied, and tested innovative remote sensing methodologies to support land rights mapping, including (1) a unique ontological analysis approach using smart sketch maps (SmartSkeMa); (2) unmanned aerial vehicle application (UAV); and (3) automatic boundary extraction (ABE) techniques, based on the acquired UAV images. To assess the applicability of the remote sensing methodologies several aspects were studied: (1) user needs, (2) the proposed methodologies responses to those needs, and (3) examine broader governance implications related to scaling the suggested approaches. The case location of Kajiado, Kenya is selected. A combination of quantitative and qualitative results resulted from fieldwork and workshops, taking into account both social and technical aspects. The results show that SmartSkeMa was potentially a versatile and community-responsive land data acquisition tool requiring little expertise to be used, UAVs were identified as having a high potential for creating up-to-date base maps able to support the current land administration system, and automatic boundary extraction is an effective method to demarcate physical and visible boundaries compared to traditional methodologies and manual delineation for land tenure mapping activities.

Highlights

The first goal of the sustainable development goals (SDGs)—target 1.4—set by the United Nations (UN) aims to deliver tenure security for all [1]
Stakeholder impressions of the SmartSkeMa application were sought along three main dimensions: (1) ability to support conventional land tenure recording activities, (2) ability to facilitate community driven land tenure recording systems, and (3) applicability in other land administration functions
Of the 21 participants, 18 agreed that the functionality of SmartSkeMa is useful for recording land tenure information while three mentioned that it was only partly useful for that purpose

Summary

Introduction

The first goal of the sustainable development goals (SDGs)—target 1.4—set by the United Nations (UN) aims to deliver tenure security for all [1]. Contemporary land administration incorporates the concept of cadastre and land registration, often with a specific focus on the security of land rights [4] It conceptually fits within the broader land management paradigm [5] with its four land administration functions (land tenure, land value, land use, and land development), seeking to deliver sustainable development. These functions utilize an underlying land information infrastructure including reliable remote sensing data. It should be noted that in this paper cadastre is considered synonymous with land registry and land administration system

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