A geospatial Solution to the Land Registration Process in the Survey of Kenya

Abstract

The Survey of Kenya (SoK) is the national mapping agency for Kenya. It has eight divisions comprising the technical, cadastral, adjudication, geodetic, mapping, ydrographic, NSDI research and policy development and province divisions. The cadastral division is responsible for all transactions relating to survey records including land registration and quality control. Cadastral survey has been practiced for over 100 years with data volumes growing daily driven by demand for land by the growing population. All cadastral survey work should be carried out by the government or by licensed private surveyors in accordance with the Survey Act (Cap 299). The SoK handles over 1,500 survey jobs per year from all over the country. The current land registration process is very manual and complex, making it cumbersome to track job processing stages, which is further compounded by irregularities occurring during the process (e.g. loss of records). The current filing system is manual making it difficult to retrieve record and amend plans. The proposed system combines all job processing stages and implements a feedback mechanism, thereby supporting tracking of survey jobs. Since it is computer-based, retrieval of information is very fast, and all information relating a particular job submission can be viewed. This solution streamlines the entire process from job submission to job approval and amendment of the Index map. In case of rejection, the surveyor is notified in time.