Transforming cadastral surveying for Ghana’s future

Incorporating smart methodologies in cadastral surveying is improving the land acquisition system in Ghana. Traditional cadastral surveying is time-consuming and, if not planned out well, could cost a fortune to survey larger land areas. In a recent project, a cadastral map was produced for a large area in just 20% of the proposed duration thanks to the use of mobile applications by local townsfolk in the cadastral surveying process.

The aim was to prepare a cadastral plan for 21,000 acres (approx. 8,500 hectares) of land situated at Jomoro in the Western Region of Ghana. The land to be surveyed is generally mountainous with lush green vegetation, farms, towns, villages and roads, and is bounded on the south by the Atlantic Ocean. The main occupations of inhabitants are coconut farming and fishing.

The traditional way of preparing a cadastral plan would have involved sending a survey party ahead of the actual survey to locate and clear the entire boundary in order to mount pillars. This would have been an arduous task, possibly involving the use of handheld GPS to locate the boundary points and the deployment of labourers to clear the line of sight where necessary. In an area with dense vegetation, it could take a whole day or more to survey 1km of boundary. The survey party would be made up of surveyors, local guides and labourers only; any other accompanying persons would be of little to no help in locating boundary pillars. The other time-consuming challenge would have been to identify the best and fastest accessible route to arrive at a boundary point. When it comes to routing, even experienced local guides are no match for today’s tools such as Google Earth.