Corporate-LIS for Effective Land Administration of Sri Lanka

Abstract

A drastic improvement on the technical and the administrational sector follows some global trends. E-government with location based applications have been initiated and launched in most developed countries and conducted in different stages of implementation. These projects greatly influence the Land administration sector witnessing the general truth; about eighty percent of all information is spatially referenced. E-application at privilege of client interaction has opened new ways of co-operation between the public and the private sector in the area of electronic Land Administration too. Spatial data are produced on various levels with different contents and different standards. Especially land administration projects will only be successful when all the players in the game follow the same rules. Hence, Land Information System (LIS) in corporation with relevant stakeholders can play a dramatic role in e-land administration of the country. Creation of seamless set of parcel data, based on country’s administrative hierarchy; Divisional Secretary Divisions (DSD) was the greatest achievement for successive LIS, in which all the parcel related information could be easily mapped for user interaction. Land parcel, being the key object in LIS should be graphically created through a suitable survey method. As the responsible organization for land surveying in the country, the Survey Department is conducting the task with well accurate field surveys. Field surveying for parcel based cadastre has been conducted in years back with resulting many progressive areas while a complete survey has been done in Moratuwa and Ratmalana Divisional Secretariats. Hence, in this paper, while discussing the LIS for whole the country, Moratuwa Divisional Secretariat will be taken as the project area. Moratuwa is situated next to the capital city; Colombo, and it is one of the populated and built-up areas in the country. The area is almost flat and 3-10m average Mean Sea Level (MSL) height depicted in the vicinity. The state land administration is governed by the Divisional Secretary and infrastructure development is mainly handled by the Local Authority; Moratuwa Municipality Council (MMC). A design or creation will not be a product, until it is published for customer use. Hence, the proceedings need to be attended are numerous for making the LIS to be an effective and efficient product for its customers. The paper will further discuss on the follow up actions for developing the system architecture, middle ware interface, web Application etc. This article may be very useful for those who wish to develop location based applications related in effective land administration towards the sustainability of the country.

Keywords: Land Information System, Land Administration, Cadastre, Land Parcel