Remote sensing for land administration 2.0

Contemporary land administration (LA) systems incorporate the concepts of cadastre and land registration. Conceptually, LA is part of a global land management paradigm incorporating LA functions such as land value, land tenure, land development, and land use. The implementation of land-related policies integrated with well-maintained spatial information reflects the aim set by the United Nations to deliver tenure security for all (Sustainable Development Goal target 1.4, amongst many others). Innovative methods for data acquisition, processing, and maintaining spatial information are needed in response to the global challenges of urbanization and complex urban infrastructure. Current technological developments in remote sensing and geo-spatial information science provide enormous opportunities in this respect. Over the past decade, the increasing usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), satellite and airborne-based acquisitions, as well as active remote sensing sensors such as LiDAR, resulted in high spatial, spectral, radiometric, and temporal resolution data. Moreover, significant progress has also been achieved in automatic image orientation, surface reconstruction, scene analysis, change detection, classification, and automatic feature extraction with the help of artificial intelligence, spatial statistics, and machine learning. These technology developments, applied to LA, are now being actively demonstrated, piloted, and scaled. This Special Issue hosts papers focusing on the usage and integration of emerging remote sensing techniques and their potential contribution to the LA domain