Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) enable Semantic Web and Linked Data implementations. KOS in terms of the Linked Land Governance Thesaurus (LandVoc) and the Cadastre and Land Administration Thesaurus (CaLAThe) render concepts of the ISO 19152:2024 Land Administration Domain Model. These all support more shared and standardized understandings in the land domain. Concept mapping is presented, and an explicit integration of thesauri and knowledge bases is illustrated for education and community engagement. The paper reflects on the integration of CaLAThe into the LandVoc and AGROVOC context. The establishment of a less strict semantic facility, supporting ad hoc teaching tasks, is motivated. ... Read more

Land administration constitutes the socio-technical systems that govern land tenure, use, value and development within a jurisdiction. The land parcel is the fundamental unit of analysis. Each parcel has identifiable boundaries, associated rights, and linked parties. Spatial information is fundamental. It represents the boundaries between land parcels and is embedded in cadastral sketches, plans, maps and databases. The boundaries are expressed in these records using mathematical or graphical descriptions. They are also expressed physically with monuments or natural features. Ideally, the recorded and physical expressions should align, however, in practice, this may not occur. This means some boundaries may be physically invisible, lacking accurate documentation, or potentially both. Emerging remote sensing tools and techniques offers great potential. Historically, the measurements used to produce recorded boundary representations were generated from ground-based surveying techniques. The approach was, and remains, entirely appropriate in many circumstances, although it can be timely, costly, and may only capture very limited contextual boundary information. Meanwhile, advances in remote sensing and photogrammetry offer improved measurement speeds, reduced costs, higher image resolutions, and enhanced sampling granularity. Applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), laser scanning, both airborne and terrestrial (LiDAR), radar interferometry, machine learning, and artificial intelligence techniques, all provide examples. Coupled with emergent societal challenges relating to poverty reduction, rapid urbanisation, vertical development, and complex infrastructure management, the contemporary motivation to use these new techniques is high. Fundamentally, they enable more rapid, cost-effective, and tailored approaches to 2D and 3D land data creation, analysis, and maintenance. This Special Issue hosts papers focusing on this intersection of emergent remote sensing tools and techniques, applied to domain of land administration ... Read more

International laws and frameworks such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its defined Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), together with the Voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests in the context of national food security (VGGTs) are key global cornerstones in the protection of women’s land rights and enabler for women to get land rights. Land rights for women is an issue that is linked to broader issues across geographical regions and cultural and religious differences. The SDGs specifically target women’s land and property rights in ending poverty (target 1.4), achieving food security (target 2.3) and ensuring gender equality (target 5a). To achieve these goals and to act according to these global policies, namely, to have equal land rights for women and men, land ownership and land use records need to include both genders. Though, in many countries, such records are non-existent or not up to date or do not show the reality on the ground. As a result, women are often passed over by the government during tenure recordation processes. ... Read more