LADM based models for sustainable development: LA-DRM for disaster prone areas and communities (an example for SDG 1 and SDG 13)

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its defined Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), together with other policies such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, or the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) stimulate innovative and transformative approaches to secure land and property rights for all.

In regard to SDG 13, the Sendai Framework specifically calls for investments in research and the development of a methodology and models for disaster risk management (DRM). Responsible land administration (LA) and DRM both focus on empowering vulnerable groups to become resilient communities. When LA is implemented responsibly, it underpins good land governance and ultimately supports sustainable LA by providing strategies and tools to document all people-to-land relationships. DRM and especially community-based DRM aims
to evaluate and manage natural disaster risks at the local level – and highlight the role of communities when it comes to natural disasters. Disaster prevention, response and recovery require information about land tenure. Though, in many high-risk contexts, such records are non-existent or not up to date. A model, LA-DRM, linking the domains of LA and DRM – with the goal of supporting resilience against natural disasters and providing an approach for collecting data once and using it multiple times addresses this issue. A design approach was
used to develop the model – with adaption of the international Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) standard, acting as a basis. Key features of the model include the support of interoperability through standardisation, the inclusion of all people-to-land relationships including those specific to disaster contexts, and the potential of the model to contribute to
each of the disaster phases. The LADM model, and its aggregated models, such as the LADRM model, though is suggested to be highly applicable in any land related SDG context where no land tenure information exists, or the national mapping authority already uses a LA system compatible with LADM. Overall, the LA-DRM model is considered as a step towards an implementable strategy for applying responsible LA in e.g. the context of DRM and serves
as an example of how to support other SDGs.