GIS Application to Support Land Administration Services in Ghana: Institutional Factors and Software Developments

In June 1999, the Ghanaian Government launched a new land policy document that sought to address some fundamental problems associated with land administration and management in the country. The document identified the weak land administration system as a particular problem and recommended the introduction of computer-aided information systems in the ‘lands sector’. In 2001, the Government made further proposals to prepare and implement a Land Administration Programme (LAP) to provide a better platform for evolving an efficient land administration that would translate the ‘National Land Policy’ into action. Thus, an up-to-date land information system (LIS), supporting efficient management of land records, is to be constructed, which provides a context for the research reported in this paper. We document two aspects of our research on the adoption of GIS by the Lands Commission Secretariat (LCS) which form part of a pilot project in GIS diffusion. Part one of the paper mainly outlines the empirical results arising from fieldwork undertaken during 2001 to determine the information and GIS requirements of the LCS in relation to their routine administrative processes and to identify the critical factors that are required to ensure that any new GIS applications are successfully embraced. Part two explains the prototype software system developed using ArcView 3.2 and Access that provides the LCS with a means to automate some of the routine administrative tasks that they are required to fulfil. The software has been modified and upgraded following an initial evaluation by LCS employees also conducted as part of the fieldwork in Accra

Development of the NASA VALT digital navigation system

The research to develop and fabricate a terminal area navigation system for use in the NASA VTOL Approach and Landing Technology (VALT) program. The results of that effort are reported. The navigation system developed and fabricated was based on a general purpose airborne digital computer. A set of flight hardware units was fabricated to create the necessary analog, digital and human interface with the computer. A comprehensive package of software was created to implement the control and guidance laws required for automatic and flight director approaches that are curved in two planes. A technique was developed that enables the generation of randomly shaped lateral paths from simple input data. The lateral path concept combines straight line and elliptical-curved segments to fit a continuous curved path to the data points. A simple, fixed base simulation was put together to assist in developing and evaluating the system. The simulation was used to obtain system performance data during simulated curved-path approaches

Development of the CHARIOT Research Register for the Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia and Other Late Onset Neurodegenerative Diseases

Identifying cognitively healthy people at high risk of developing dementia is an ever-increasing focus. These individuals are essential for inclusion in observational studies into the natural history of the prodromal and early disease stages and for interventional studies aimed at prevention or disease modification. The success of this research is dependent on having access to a well characterised, representative and sufficiently large population of individuals. Access to such a population remains challenging as clinical research has, historically, focussed on patients with dementia referred to secondary and tertiary services. The primary care system in the United Kingdom allows access to a true prodromal population prior to symptoms emerging and specialist referral. We report the development and recruitment rates of the CHARIOT register, a primary care-based recruitment register for research into the prevention of dementia. The CHARIOT register was designed specifically to support recruitment into observational natural history studies of pre-symptomatic or prodromal dementia stages, and primary or secondary prevention pharmaceutical trials or other prevention strategies for dementia and other cognitive problems associated with ageing.Participants were recruited through searches of general practice lists across the west and central London regions. Invitations were posted to individuals aged between 60 and 85 years, without a diagnosis of dementia. Upon consent, a minimum data set of demographic and contact details was extracted from the patient's electronic health record.To date, 123 surgeries participated in the register, recruiting a total of 24,509 participants-a response rate of 22.3%. The age, gender and ethnicity profiles of participants closely match that of the overall eligible population. Higher response rates tended to be associated with larger practices (r = 0.34), practices with a larger older population (r = 0.27), less socioeconomically disadvantaged practices (r = 0.68), and practices with a higher proportion of White patients (r = 0.82).Response rates are comparable to other registers reported in the literature, and indicate good interest and support for a research register and for participation in research for the prevention of age-related neurodegenerative diseases and dementia. We consider that the simplicity of the approach means that this system is easily scalable and replicable across the UK and internationally