Article of the Month in 2018

FIG publishes each month the Article of the Month. This is a high-level paper focusing on interesting topic to all surveyors. This article can be picked up from an FIG conference or another event or it can be a paper written directly for this purpose.

• December 2018 is written by David Goodwin and James Berghan, New Zealand:  A planning model to incorporate socially-based tenure principles into mainstream planning. This paper was presented at the FIG Congress in Istanbul, Turkey in May 2018. The paper focuses on socially-based tenure. The best-planned housing developments, may nonetheless fail as viable communities. A possible contributing factor is the manner in which individualised tenure systems tend to divorce land rights from social responsibilities. Recognising this, some Māori planning initiatives in New Zealand have sought to re-introduce key communal or socially-based tenure principles to the planning equation.
• November 2018 is written by Guanqing LI and Shengxiang HUANG, China: Control Survey for a 6.7 km Immersed Tunnel in Chinese Lingding Ocean. This paper was presented at the FIG Congress in Istanbul, Turkey in May 2018. The paper focuses on the 6.7 km Immersed Tunnel that links Hong Kong to the east, and Zhuhai and Macao to the west. For the construction of  such a long immersed tunnel, particular care should be taken in the perspective of geodetic control.The paper describes the design and implemention of the geodetic basis and hierarchical surface control networks.
  
  
• October 2018 is written by Stig Enemark, Denmark and Robin McLaren: Making FFP Land Administration Compelling and Work in Practice. This paper was presented at the Commission 7 Annual Meeting in Bergen, Norway, 24-28 September 2018. The paper initially provides background to the 2030 Global Agenda and the realisation that many of these goals will not be achieved without quickly solving the current insecurity of tenure crisis through the FFP approach to land administration. Finally, the paper reviews the lessons learned from implementing FFP land administration solutions in three developing countries, Indonesia, Nepal and Uganda.
  
  
• September 2018 is written by Morten Hartvigsen, FAO: FAO support to land consolidation in Europe and Central Asia from 2000-2018 - Experiences and way forward. The paper gives an overview of the FAO land consolidation programme from 2000 and onwards including lessons learned and way forward. The objective of this paper is to present the FAO experiences of supporting member countries related to land consolidation.
  
  
• August 2018 is written by Carlos BRETT, Venezuela and Isaac BOATENG, United Kingdom: Alternative Approach and toolkits for Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services of Wetlands: An Application to Farlington Marshes, UK. This article has passed the FIG peer review and was presented at the FIG Congress 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey. Despite the relevance of wetlands there is no generally accepted methodology for the economic valuation of ecosystem goods and services of wetlands.This paper attempts to develop an alternative holistic approach.
   
• July 2018 is written by Kwabena Asiama et al. (Netherlands): Land Valuation in Support of Responsible Land Consolidation on Ghana’s Rural Customary. The paper was awarded the Survey Review Prize, and has passed through the reviewing and revision stage overseen by FIG, before being judged by members of the Editorial Board of Survey Review. The paper deals with an important subject and has implications for many other countries in which customary land rights apply.
  
  
• June 2018 is written by Wan Anom WAN ARIS, Tajul Ariffin MUSA, Kamaludin MOHD OMAR and Abdullah Hisam OMAR, Malaysia: Non-Linear Crustal Deformation Modeling for Dynamic Reference Frame: A Case Study in Peninsular Malaysia. The paper was awarded the navXperience AWARD, granted by FIG Commission 5. This Peer Review paper was presented at the FIG Congress 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey. The Paper developes innovative methods to model non-linear crustal movements and consider these models for non-static reference frames.

• May 2018 is written Abdulvahit Torun, Turkey: Geodata Enabled Hierarchical Blockchain Architecture for Resolving Boundary Conflicts in Cadastre Surveys and Land Registration. The paper provides a view into application facilities of blockchain technology for cadastra and land registration and will be presented during the congress.

• April 2018 is written by Lopang MAPHALE and Kealeboga Kaizer MORERI, Botswana: A consideration for a conceptual partnership framework in building spatial data infrastructures in developing countries. The paperhas been peer-reviewed and is going to be presented during the FIG Congres 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey.

• March 2018 is written by Brian Coutts, New Zealand: A case for Geospatial Surveyors. This article evaluates whether the term "geomatics" has met the original needs and if its use is still valid or if a better term is available. While widely used in academia, the surveying profession has been more reluctant to adopt the term and controversy and confusion have grown up around its meaning. Brian Coutts is Chair of FIG Commission 1, Professional Standards and Practice.

• February 2018 is written by Bakogiannis Efthimios, Charalampos Kyriakidis, Maria Siti, Nikolaos Kougioumtzidis and Chryssy Potsiou, Greece: The use of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in noise mapping. This paper was presented at the conference in Bucharest, Romania.The aim of this paper is to present an overview of a research about the monitoring of the urban acoustic environment affordably and reliably, and investigating the potential use of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) for such applications in typical medium-sized cities.

• January 2018 is written by Daniel Páez, Abbas Rajabifard & Joaquín Andrés Franco Gantiva, Colombia: Methodological proposal for measuring and predicting Urban Green Space per capita in a Land-Use Cover Change model: Case Study in Bogota. This paper was presented at the Commission 7 Annual Meeting in Bogota Colombia. It describes the problem of lack of sustainable urban planning and territorial ordinance plans which have led to nullification, fragmentation and reduction of green space and strategic ecosystems within cities.