CONCEPT, DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LAND …

- 1 -Copyright @ 2015 Hansa Luftbild AG

CONCEPT, DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LAND ADMINISTRATION AND CADASTRE

SYSTEMS USING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

Tarek ZeinInternational Consultant

Hansa LuftbildMarch 2015


1. Company Introduction

2. Issue

3. Open Source vs Proprietary Software

4. Open Source for Land Administration

Systems

5. Proposed Reference Architecture

6. Land Admnistration Systems based

on Open Source Software

7. Conclusion

Contents


History

Aero Lloyd merges with Deutsche Lufthansa→ New name: Hansa Luftbild GmbH

1926

1923 Foundation of Aero Lloyd Luftbild GmbH

2013

2000 Foundation of Hansa Luftbild AG

90th anniversary of Hansa Luftbild


Services

Hansa LuftbildHansa Luftbild

Remote Sensing &

Photogrammetry

Remote Sensing &

PhotogrammetryConsulting InternationalConsulting InternationalGeoinformation SystemsGeoinformation Systems

Geodata production

Data acquisition

Data capturing

Data conversion

Geo IT-management

Software development

Data modelling / analysis

System supply and support

Consulting & Solutions

Management of complex

international projects

General contracting

Organisation


Issue

In deploying new or modernizing existing land administration and cadastre systems (LAS) authorities / agencies are often confronted with an important decision:

open source or proprietary software?

� Neither open source nor proprietary software caters to the full requirements of land administration and cadastre authorities.

� These platforms will require customization to adhere to the requirements of the requesting authority, region or country.


Open Source vs Proprietary Software

Motivation

• proprietary software companies want to make a profit, sell more licences, earn more money through new upgrades, new versions etc.; knowledge is monopolised

• open source community wants to solve problems, share knowledge, make software accessible to all; commercial interests are there, not for selling licences but for services and solutions



Many online discussions and blogs address the issue of the relative advantages of open source based solutions versus those of proprietary

based solutions

Ben Kepes writes:Open source is good, but proprietary is still winning

(www.forbes.com)

Virginia Backaitis writes:

There is no clear winner (www.cmswire.com)

David A. Wheeler writes:using open source software / free software is a reasonable or even

superior approach to using proprietary…..(www.dwheeler.com)



…, it's no longer a case of open source or proprietary. The reality is that a combination of both types of software used in one infrastructure with each meeting specific requirements of an organisation is the best way forward.

March Evans (www.quru.com)



The (US) Department of Homeland Security has developed its own intrusion detection system called Suricata – a complete suite that is based on open source.

The National Security Agency (NSA) supports other open source projects, one of which is Security Enhanced Linux (SE-Linux) for which it has developed an access control module called Flask, hosted at the University of Utah.

Mark Evans (www.quru.com)



Government

• City of Garden Grove, California• National Physical Laboratory of India• The National Weather Service• Registre Francais des Emissions Polluantes• United Nations Children's Fund• United Nations Industrial Development Organisation• U.S. Agency for International Development• U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention• U.S. Department of Labor• U.S. General Services Administration• U.S. State Department

(www.postgresql.org)

Featured Users of PostgreSQL – an open source database management system



Pharmaceutical / Chemical

• Affymetrix• American Chemical Society• BASF, Agricultural Product Division• Institut de Biologie et Chimie des Protéines• Genentech, Inc.

Telecom• Cisco• Juniper Networks• NTT Data• Optus• Rambler Internet Holdings• Skype• Telstra

(www.postgresql.org)

Featured Users of PostgreSQL – an open source database management system



European Commissionin 2000 defined strategy for the internal use of open source software

(Source Damas, Directorate-General for Informatics (DIGIT) of the European Commission, 2014



European Commission

Two of the key components of the EC strategy for the internal use of open source software covering the period 2011-2013 are:

1. continue to adopt formally (through the Product Management procedure) the use of open source software technologies and products where a clear benefit can be expected, and

2. consider open source software solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT procurements. Contracts to be awarded on a "value for money" basis.

(http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/informatics/oss_tech/index_en.htm)



European Commission

(source Damas, Directorate-General for Informatics (DIGIT) of the European Commission, 2014


Land Information Systems (LAS)

Land administration is defined as “…the processes of recording and disseminating information about the ownership, value and use of land and its associated resources.”

(UN-ECE, 1996)

Williamson et al. (2010) in their book Land Administration for Sustainable Development state that the LAS must support four main land management functions :land tenure, land value, land use, and land development



Williamson et al. (2010) statefour main ingredients to implementing a sustainable and successful LAS:

• The land management paradigm with its core administration functions• The common processes found in every system• A toolbox approach offering tools and implementation options• A role for land administration in supporting sustainable development



• Land management paradigm covers the four main land management functions: land tenure, land value, land use, and land development

• Common processes which are found in every LAS: dividing up land,tracking changes, or distributing land

• Toolbox containing a set of tools (abstract or technical) which can be used for setting up an LAS

• Role of LAS is to provide the necessary information about land to support decisions related to the environment, the economy and the society

Focus will be on the technical tools common to all LASs


Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) for LAS

Development of LAS requires a data model which falls within the land admnistration domain

ISO 19512:2012 Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) provides all necessary data modelling and data structure related to the design and implementation of an LAS

ISO 19152 is the result of wide-ranging consultations between many international expertsLADM has two main goals:

• providing an extensible basis for the development and refinement of efficient and effective land administration systems, based on a Model Driven Architecture (MDA), and

• enabling the involved parties, both within one country and between different countries, to communicate, based on the shared vocabulary implied by the model


Open Source Software for LAS Development

Technical implementation of an LAS can be seen as an onion layermodel



• Inner/first layer, the IT layer, is the general purpose IT system;

completely domain independent; main components are the

database and geographic information systems (GIS).

• Second layer, the cadastre and land register layer contains the

cadastre and land registration system, providing the general

functionality which all LAS have in common.

• Third layer, the LAS layer, contains the implementation which is

specific to a concrete LAS and includes the processes and the

models.

• Outer layer, the spatial data infrastructure (SDI) layer, contains

the interface to services and systems based on land information

and to spatially enabled government processes, ensuring

sustainable development.



The IT layer and the cadastre and land register layer are independent

from a concrete LAS. Therefore these layers are ideal candidates for an

OSS implementation based on the collaborative approach

OSS components:

• PostgreSQL with PostGIS for implementing database with spatial

data handling

• QGIS for implementing the GIS component• GeoServer for implementing all OGC compliant services• OpenLayers for implementing all web client related applications

� On the basis of these OSS components another web application with the name ExperMaps has been developed

www.expermaps.com


Proposed Reference Architecture

Development of cadastre and land registration system requires a structured approach; most important factors

Factor Description

Completely based on open source software All 3rd party components (such as libraries, databases, etc.) must be published under an open source license.The software must be able to operate in a completely open source environment, including the operating system.

Reduction of complexity Complexity must be reduced during the development and during operation.

Scalability The system should be scalable from local to national authorities. Scaling must be horizontal and/or vertical.

Extensibility A system cannot cover all requirements. Therefore the design must be extendable; either through tailoring or replacement.



Two general design principles are applied:

• layer design pattern, and

• separation of concerns and high cohesion

Principles used to structure the system in parts or components



System is structured in four main component levels:

1.ExperMaps Data Level

2.Internal OGC Service Level

3.ExperMaps LAS

4.Desktop GIS - QGIS



1. ExperMaps Data Level• provides the persistence services for the entire system and is

implemented in PostgreSQL / PostGIS database. The database hosts an LADM compliant data model;

• integrates a document management system (DMS) implemented in Alfresco or Agorum, both are OSS developments

2. Internal OGC Service Level• provides OGC compliant services and is implemented on a

GeoServer.



3. ExperMaps LAS• is the core component of the system and is implemeted with

ExperMaps. It includes all domain specific functionalities. • separated into two parts, the application level and the user

interface (GUI)• application level uses node.js as a runtime environment• GUI is front end of the system and is based on OpenLayers and

is implemented in JavaScript

4. Desktop GIS – QGIS• desktop GIS implemented in QGIS used for advanced GIS

operations, such as cartography, in-depth spatial analysis, importing and edit of surveying data, etc..

• data transfer between QGIS and ExperMaps LAS performed via standard interfaces, such as the Web Feature Service (WFS) or the Georaphic Markup Language (GML).


Open Source in Land Administration and Spatial Data Infrastructure

Solutions for Open Land Administration SOLA

(Source: Bonn City Administration 2014)

Two constraints were applied to the SOLA development

1. Open source software to be used in the implementation

2. System should be portable to a wide range of major

hardware and operating system platforms




The outcome of the processes’ definition and requirements was an architecture based on a modular generic core customizable according to the needs of land and cadastre authorities or agencies in different countries

SOLA database design is based on the Land Admnistration Domain Model (LADM)




Architecture of SOLACore services include

• Spatial component for managing land parcels,

• Cadastre for handling land administration data,

• Hibernate for data persistence

Core has 3 extension points

(Source: Alexander Lokhman et al, 2012)




Software & framework components

Open source licences

(Source: Alexander Lokhman et al, 2012)




Customizations in Ghana, Nepal, Samoa, Lesotho, Tonga and Nigeria

(Source: www.flossola.org, 2015)



(Source: www.landdirect.ie, 2015)

Landdirect - Property Registration Authority (PRA) – Ireland

Web application built on GeoServer offering easy access to information



(Source: FLOSS in Cadastre and Land Registration, 2010)

Country Experience – Bavaria, Germany

Open source components of the Bavarian surveying and geodata management system



Bonn system based on open source software

(Source: Bonn City Administration, 2014)


Conclusion

The use of open source software provides a good opportunity for developing countries to own a cost efficient land administrationsoftware solution which can ensure sustainable development


Thank you for your attention

Hansa Luftbild AGNevinghoff 20 48147 MuensterGermany

Tel.: +49-251-2330-0Fax.: +49-251-2330-112

[email protected]

Documents

CONCEPT, DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LAND …