Improving Resilience of National Land and Geospatial Systems

Project Narrative

Until recently, disaster risk management (DRM) investments financed by the World Bank (and the wider international development community) commonly considered national land administration and geospatial information systems as too antiquated, inaccessible, out of date and/or cumbersome to integrate with more technologically-advanced applications – such as weather and climate monitoring, early warning systems, and resilience-focused planning. Yet improvements and enhancements to these systems have a huge potential to improve national disaster resilience and address the needs and risks of on-the-ground emergency response data and services. Improvements can include elements and actions like the integration of data-sets, improved standardisation of data and data formats, ensuring common reference systems in use and improving joint coordination through formalisation of data sharing, exchange and servicing platforms. These efforts allow for much more effective and efficient planning, response, recovery and rebuilding for disasters.

This technical assistance project supported the development of an action plan for Kerala State, India for increasing the resilience and resilience impacts of its national land administration and geospatial information systems. The action plan included the following stages: (i) diagnosis of the current land administration and geospatial information systems and their infrastructure and resilience impact; (ii) definition of disaster risk typology and readiness of these systems to provide for disaster risk management and applications; (iii) strategic roadmap development for programmatic approaches for improving the systems for resilience; (iv) a multi-stakeholder workshop for action plan development; and (v) identification of an investment plan to increase the resilience and resilience impact of Kerala State’s national land administration and geospatial information systems.

Key Services Provided

LEI’s, Executive Director, Tony Burns worked within a team of specialists to assess Kerala State’s land administration system, including registration, services, land records, surveying, valuation, institutional arrangements (mandates), and make recommendations for resilience.

Specific attention was given to:

• the status of land offices,
• the land records management system,
• survey plans and maps,
• the completeness and performance of the land administration system by comparing performance with technical and operational performance standards,
• a study on revenue generation and sharing scenarios to inform the development of revenue collection processes,
• roles of the private sector and regulatory requirements,
• additional service needs to achieve new levels of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and equity in the delivery of land services, and
• potential risks of financial sustainability of the land administration system.

In addition to the above assessment, Tony worked with the Task Team’s Lead Land and Geospatial Strategic Specialist to assess the utilisation and impact of Kerala State’s land administration system for disaster risk management and its level of resilience in the event of a disaster; and supported the development of an Action Plan, including a clear definition of activities, their cost and completion time, indicators and expected impacts.