Spatial dimensions of land administration and user rights over groundwater

Abstract

Supporting the management of rights related to groundwater based on input from hydrogeology software is contributing to bridging the gap between the technical and administrative aspects of groundwater management. The research reported herein is focused on a specific example (or ‘use case’ in UML terminology), resulting from a court action by Kerala State in India, against the Coca-Cola company, on the overexploitation of the local groundwater aquifer. The use case reports on the economic and policy contexts conducing to the establishment of the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Plachimada, and the ensuing court actions, triggered by the local community assembly first, and then by Kerala State authority, on the grounds of the introduction of toxic waste into the groundwater, making the water unfit for human consumption, and the depletion of the aquifer. Considering the specifics of the use case, the ISO/TC211 Land Administration Domain Model (LADM, DIS 19152) is used as a basis for the development of a specialized profile addressing the need to define laws and regulations with proper spatial and temporal dimensions, to represent the rights to groundwater use by the local communities. Two alternative scenarios are reported: the first is based in the consideration that all the different Property parcels are regulated by Private Law; the second, further develops on the consideration of groundwater as a Public Trust, thus regulating private use through the Public Law domain. The modelling here provided goes from a subset of the LADM conceptual classes to more specialized classes, and is reported through the use of class and instance level (object) diagrams. These build on the existing spatial unit package and the legal and administrative profile, demonstrating the flexibility which can be introduced by LADM. Specifically concerning the representation of spatial units, a previously proposed ‘Mixed 2D/3D’ spatial profile is further developed, addressing the needs of the use case. In combination with the ‘Level’ representation of LADM to organize spatial units, it can contribute to an easier reuse of existing, 2D based, land parcels data, into the proposed 3D and time based model architecture. Concluding, the modelling and architectural framework here reported contributes to a more informed decision in the choice of groundwater rights to be made by the law, policy and courts, taking into account societal needs and changes induced by new socio-economic contexts. The resulting institutional setting will be best informed with spatial and temporal data, and the legal solution chosen be it public or private law focused, can be recorded in a system based on the LADM standard; it allows for much flexibility and only a few specific classes need to be added and further specified in order to be implemented. system based on the LADM standard; it allows for much flexibility and only a few specific classes need to be added and further specified in order to be implemented.