Land administration is the way in which the rules of
land tenure are applied and made operational. Land administration, whether formal or informal, comprises an extensive range of systems and processes to administer. The processes of land administration include the transfer of rights in land from one party to another through sale, lease, loan, gift and inheritance; the regulating of land and property development; the use and conservation of the land; the gathering of revenues from the land through sales, leasing, and taxation; and the resolving of conflicts concerning the ownership and the use of land. Land administration functions may be divided into four components: Juridical, regulatory, fiscal, and information management. These functions of land administration may be organized in terms of agencies responsible for
surveying and mapping, land registration,
land valuation and land revenue generation. The purpose and scope of this knowledge domain appear from the following introducing notes:
:These Guidelines define land administration as the process whereby land and the information about land may be effectively managed. They are mainly written for senior governmental staff and politicians engaged in land administration issues. The aim is to outline the benefit of having a relevant and reliable land information system in place. The Guidelines identify the factors that should be taken into account in developing the legislation, organization, databases and maps, as well as the funding mechanisms, required to implement and maintain a solid land administration system.
An early example of use of the notion of land administration is a 1973 ''Seminar on Land Administration'' in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. ''Land administration arrangements'' were charted in a 1985 paper by Holstein, McLaughlin, and Nichols, and the Department of Lands and Surveys, Western Australia changed name in 1986 to Department of Land Administration. The UNECE in 1996 published ''Land Administration Guidelines With Special Reference to Countries in Transition'', and the Dale & McLaughlin textbook on ''Land Information Management'' from 1988 was in 1999 succeeded by the textbook ''Land Administration''.
History
The practise of land administration is older than the presently used term. In ''The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State'', mention is made of
cadastral survey
Cadastral surveying is the sub-field of cadastre and surveying that specialises in the establishment and re-establishment of real property boundaries. It involves the physical delineation of property boundaries and determination of dimensions, ar ...
and subsequent tax collection in northern part of the Netherlands, initiated by an order in 1533. Other early, seventeenth century mapping for administrative purposes are found, e.g. in Sweden and in German
principalities. In the duchy of Austrian Lombardy, a complete cadastral survey, the Milan cadaster, was finally adopted as a taxation base in 1760, and this provided the model for continental European countries to follow. Largely independent from this cadastral development, local courts recorded
deeds of conveyance. In the context of
codification of national legislation, most European countries in the nineteenth century established a
title system at the local courts. England and Wales departed from this trend, as prolonged debates during the nineteenth century left parties with optional public recording of deeds of conveyance and the locating of properties and their boundaries on large-scale topographic maps, where available, similar to the
metes and bounds method. However, most of
British India
The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
was covered, during the nineteenth century, by the Revenue Survey.
In the colony (now state) of South Australia,
Robert Torrens in 1858 introduced a title system. Like the Milan cadastre, this system became a model to be followed, initially within the
Commonwealth. In the USA, the
Land Ordinance of 1785 established the basis for the
Public Land Survey System, which provides locational functions as the cadastral or - in modern terms -
land information system described above. For the present adoption of the Torrens system in the USA, see Justin T. Holl, Jr. et al. (2007).
International organizations
The domain of land administration is characterized by the engagement of
international organizations as much as by its intrinsic, multi-disciplinary structure. Among
intergovernmental organization
Globalization is social change
Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations.
Definition
Social change may not refer to the not ...
s,
* The
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...
has supported land and real estate reforms across a wide range of countries. Its Agriculture and Rural Development research program includes the development of the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) and the issuing of Policy Research Reports like ''Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction (2003)''. Moreover, the World Bank Group offer a yearly study of conditions for private sector development, including a rating of the ease of ''Registering property''.
*
UN-HABITAT's section on Land, Tenure & Property Administration focus on the implementation of land, housing and property rights, particularly women's secure tenure, affordable land management systems and pro-poor flexible types of tenure. The insufficient attention paid to the development of methods for implementing land policies, led to the development of pro poor land tools that are affordable and accessible for use by a variety of stakeholders. Efforts further include the creation of the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN).
*
FAO focuses on
land tenure in the rural domain, and has among others issued a ''Multilingual thesaurus on land tenure''.
* The
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
through its
Development and Cooperation - EuropeAid supports agriculture and rural development, including a more secure access to land
International professional associations include
* The
International Federation of Surveyors
International Federation of Surveyors ( abbreviated FIG, after the french: Fédération Internationale des Géomètres) is the UN-recognized global organization for the profession of surveying and related disciplines. It was established in 1878, with its 10 commissions, including ''7. Cadastre and Land Management'', and the repository of pertinent articles, OICRF
* Commonwealth Association of Surveying and Land Economy (CASLE), with its international journal ''Survey Review''
* The International Union of
Notaries, which issues the international journal ''Notarius International''
The list of partners in the ''Global Land Tool Network'' refers to more international organisations,
NGOs, research institutions, etc.
University departments
The Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) of the University of Twente, the Netherlands, provides international postgraduate education, research and project services in the field of geo-information science and earth observation using remote sensing and GIS. The aim of ITC's activities is the international exchange of knowledge, focusing on capacity building and institutional development in developing countries and emerging economies. ITC cooperates with the United Nations University at developing and carrying out a joint programme on capacity building in disaster management and in land administration
[{{Cite web , url=http://www.itc.nl/unu-las , title=UNU School for Land Administration Studies , access-date=2012-03-11 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120212193936/http://www.itc.nl/unu-las , archive-date=2012-02-12 , url-status=dead ]
Land Administration
Geomatics
Geomatics is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as the "discipline concerned with the collection, distribution, storage, analysis, processing, presentation of geographic data or geographic information". Under another definition, it ...
at the University of Melbourne, Australia, is about science and research into spatial information. The Geomatics team is an international leader in spatial data infrastructures and land administration. The research agenda embraces legal, institutional and technical issues of establishing and accessing information about land faced by land managers and administrators, in both developed and developing countries.
Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration
A number of universities offer land administration courses in the context of related master's degree programmes:
Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany: Land Management and Land TenureKTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden: Real Estate Development and Financial ServicesDepartment of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary, Canada: GIS and Land TenurePublic Administration College of Zhejiang University: Land Resources ManagementFaculty of Geoinformation & Real Estate, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM): Land Administration and Development
See also
*
Cadastre
A cadastre or cadaster is a comprehensive recording of the real estate or real property's metes-and-bounds of a country.Jo Henssen, ''Basic Principles of the Main Cadastral Systems in the World,'/ref>
Often it is represented graphically in a cad ...
*
Land reform
Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultura ...
*
Land registration
Land registration is any of various systems by which matters concerning ownership, possession, or other rights in land are formally recorded (usually with a government agency or department) to provide evidence of title, facilitate transactions, ...
*
Land tenure
References
Real property law
Public administration
Public records
Geographic data and information