Innovations in land data governance: Unstructured data, NOSQL, blockchain, and big data analytics unpacked
Rohan Bennett, Mark Pickering, Jason Sargent
Unstructured data, non-relational databases, distributed databases (including blockchain technologies), and big data analytics potentially change the landscape for land data creation, management, and dissemination. The way land data is governed and the impact this can have on the delivery of land tenure is open to radical re-thinking. Drawing from international cases, this paper provides a state-of-the-art examination of cases, prototypes, and demonstrators where distributed, unstructured, non-relational, and analytical database tools are being explored and applied in the land sector. The aim is to deliver an insight into the opportunities, challenges, and lessons regarding the approaches, and how they are impacting on the broader delivery of land tenure security. The paper finds that whilst uptake of non-relational and distributed databases is occurring, it still remains largely at the level of proof-of-concept, demonstrator or pilot. Against other sectors, scaled uptake is occurring slower than anticipated meaning any assessment of the broader impacts on the land sector and broader society are somewhat premature. Meanwhile, emerging distributed analytical databases appears to be underexploited or at least underexplored by the land sector. Overall, the examined technologies are not only offering new operational approaches for the conventional land sector transaction, but also the creation of entirely new land related services, products, and actors. These embryonic developments are likely to greatly influence the land data governance landscape.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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