First experiences with a high-resolution imagery-based adjudication approach in Ethiopia

Abstract

Great progress has been made with rural land certification in Ethiopia. This process, however, has been mainly confined to the first phase certificates – those without a georeference. In 2008, a team conducted a simple field test using high resolution imagery. On-site tests were performed to determine if Quickbird satellite imagery could be used to establish parcel index maps in selected villages. The data collection in the field was performed with the help of land rights holders and local officials. The image quality of the plots at a scale of 1:2000 was sufficiently high to allow the parties to easily understand the images and contribute input, making the process very participatory. Many land rights holders were not able to present their certificates, suggesting updating issues. Even though the test was not well prepared, it yielded useful experiences and data. This limited data set was processed initially with ArcGIS and later with the first prototype of the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM), which is open-source software. Processing the limited graphical display of the boundaries was relatively easy, but trying to link the data to Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates (collected, at the same time, with hand-held GPS) was not immediately possible due to offsets caused by a number of reasons. Nevertheless, the approach seems very useful for lower land value areas where coverage is more important than (absolute) accuracy.