Cadastral Systems Re-engineering in Urban Zimbabwe

Land is undoubtedly the most important resource in any country as it contributes to economic  development. The cadastre is a component of the land administration system (LAS) that is crucial for  managing land. It is thus of importance for a nation to have both a functional cadastral system for  determining parcel boundaries and a functional cadastral information system, for managing the land  parcels. The cadastral survey system and cadastre in Zimbabwe are largely manual with even the  lodgement of completed surveys for examination and approval still analogue. This has an impact on the  time it takes to complete a land transaction. Land can ideally drive the economy yet part of the value is  lost due to lengthy land transaction procedures. The land administration system is supposed to consist of value adding processes in which several actors interact in a workflow which creates new or transfers parcels. This workflow is associated with transaction costs, part of which can be employed for  maintenance of the cadastral information system. This article presents business processes for the land development process in Zimbabwe but focusing on City of Gweru (CoG) and City of Mutare (CoM)  municipalities as the major organisations under study. Municipalities in Zimbabwe are governed by the Regional Town and Country Planning Act, so such a single process and workflow model can fit into the cadastral information system of all municipalities in Zimbabwe with insignificant changes. The broader scope of this study is towards the design of a conceptual schema for automating the land administration system and particularly, the cadastre component, for municipalities in Zimbabwe. This study presents the workflows for the current land development system with CoG and CoM as the current focal points. Information on current automation efforts or reforms by other major municipalities to include Bulawayo, Kadoma and Kariba is also presented. The overall theme of this paper is to discuss cadastral reform through automation of cadastral processes in municipalities

A Comparative Study of Cadastre 2014 and the Zimbabwean Cadastral System

The global trend in land information management over the last two decades has been to migrate from paper to computer based information systems. Notable concepts in this regard are: Cadastre 2014, Core Cadastral Domain Model, Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) and subsequent related works. In Zimbabwe, although some concepts in these guidelines manifest in most recent policy documents such as the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset), there has been no deliberate effort to implement them in a holistic and structured manner. This has resulted in fragmented solutions that have failed to meet the requirements of modern land information systems. A case study approach was adopted to gather information from stakeholders working within the Department of the Surveyor General, Deeds Registry, Local Planning Authorities and also including private practitioners involved in the cadastral system. In order to document and describe the existing cadastral framework in the country, an investigation through review of the relevant scholarly articles, policy documents and government reports was carried out, followed by interviews and questionnaires targeted at the major stakeholders. The underlying concepts of the cadastral framework in terms of its operation and workflows were investigated and compared with the Cadastre 2014 conceptual framework. Results indicated that no significant strides have been made in Zimbabwe towards implementing the six statements of Cadastre 2014 and other related best practice standards. This paper is useful as background for any research that will be done on the Zimbabwean cadastre. However, currently there is some momentum towards realisation of new tenure arrangements, review of land survey records and the capturing of cadastral information in a digital environment. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge of cadastral systems in the Zimbabwean context and in the world at large

Towards monitoring and managing the production of cadastral information in land information infrastructures using supply chain mapping and the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model

Coping with rapid urbanisation and the impacts of climate change requires effective land management. Quality land information is essential for this. A land information infrastructure is a collaborative and coordinated initiative aimed at providing land information from different organisations, such as municipalities, government departments and private companies, to diverse user communities. A land information infrastructure is complex, spanning information streams through many organisations and technical systems, and presenting challenges for managing and monitoring the production of land information. In the manufacturing field, a supply chain refers to the stream of activities from the initial source to the delivery of end products to customers, and supply chain management is directed at optimising the creation of the products of such a chain. The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model is widely used for analysing supply chain processes in order to quantify and improve product and service delivery, and it has also been applied to geographical information supply chains. In this study, the SCOR model is applied to the supply chain processes in a South African case study of a land information infrastructure focusing on the production of cadastral information products. The supply chain comprises a land developer, a land surveying firm, the Surveyor General’s and Deeds Offices, a geospatial data vendor and the end customer. This supply chain is mapped and analysed using supply chain mapping and the SCOR model, and based on this, the complexity of the land information infrastructure is revealed. The study shows that supply chain management and the SCOR model can be used to analyse, monitor and manage the production processes of land information within a land information infrastructure.http://www.sajg.org.za/index.php/sajgam2021Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorolog