Geodetic.ai Land Registry

While the global economic frontier is increasingly digital and distributed, land management systems mostly remain analogue and centralized. Consequently, in most parts of the world, land has become an obstacle to societal advancement rather than an enabler. The majority of the world’s seven billion people live in areas where land records are poorly managed, land attributes are poorly documented, and governments at all levels are inadequately resourced to undertake long-overdue land registry modernization (referred as “cadastral updates”). Inequitable access to land-specific data, supporting capital, and legal resources tends to concentrate resultant economic opportunity from land. Globally, nations and municipalities are increasingly aware of this source of inequity and economic inefficiency and are committing significant resources to upgrading their land management systems.

The global revolution in mobile and digital communications provides an opportunity discontinuous, dramatic, and indefinitely sustainable advances in global development through the creation of digital land management systems on a country-by-country basis. Mobile phones--which are actually mobile computers--are used by more than 5 billion people, or 65% of the world’s population; 80% of those users, or 4 billion people, have Internet access. Yet most mobile and Internet users exploit only a small portion of the capabilities that their devices offer. 

Geodetic.ai combines mobile-acquired geospatial data with state-of-the-art geospatial visualization technologies (known as “digital twins”) to create and validate land ownership and residency claims. The existence of authoritative and accessible land registries not only increases financial inclusion, but also reduces gender inequity and enhances environmental sustainability. What is more, the undertaking itself has the potential to create employment opportunities at a large-scale, seeding a global, public-private, digital Marshall Plan that will directly address the challenge of inequitable access to digital opportunity. 

This video illustrates the creation of a digital twin of AlUla, Saudi Arabia, accomplished by MipMap Technologies, which is a 50% partner in Geodetic.ai.

We will license technology from our partners at Zephr.xyz which allows networks of mobile phones to acquire geospatial data with survey-grade accuracy. 

Our end-to-end system is designed to allow people and communities (1) to acquire, upload and validate land data and (2) to deploy applications and services using that data. In any given geography, we deploy in three stages:

• Stage I focuses on enhancing the extent and quality of digital land data through crowdsourcing and digital twin technologies

• Stage II involves the validation of data and making validated data openly accessible

• Stage III involves the creation of new, market-catalyzing applications based on digital land data

To operationalize this approach requires combining traditional geospatial data infrastructure with crowdsourced data that is acquired with high-levels of geospatial accuracy. The business model involves the development of applications that accelerate adoption and create supporting revenue flows (for example, in the real estate market), enhancing business sustainability. Doing so creates a market a “pull” for digital land administration  infrastructure.

Inadequate land administration systems undermine economic prosperity in three ways:

• First, in the absence of effective land management systems, property either remains underdeveloped or inappropriately is used (for example, in the case of informal construction in flood zones)

• Second, even those with valid claims under-invest due to insecurity

• Third, because land generates inadequate opportunity, absentee ownership proliferates.

Improved land administration systems have the potential to improve both the efficiency and the equity of land use decisions, enabling new transactions and catalyzing new approaches to making use of land-based resources. With improved land administration systems, land investments are de-risked, land owners are able to live and transact more securely, private companies intensify land-related investments, and all participants are able to more creatively discover new ways to create value from land. 

Better land administration systems also advance economic prosperity bystrengthening insurance markets (enhancing societal resilience), supporting better urban planning, and improving environmental management.

Our initial application to planing for post-war Gaza, supporting the Gaza Housing, Land, and Property Initiative.

The CEO of Geodetic.ai, Philip Auerswald, is a professor of public policy at George Mason University with over a decade of experience working on technologies for land administration and land management (ref. this piece published in 2012 titled “Integrating Technology and Institutional Change: Toward the Design and Deployment of 21st Century Digital Property Rights Institutions"). Professor Auerswald is a cofounder of the MIT Initiative on Digital Infrastructure for Land, Water, and Air, established in 2019. Professor Auerswald is also the cofounder and coeditor of Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, a journal about entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges published by MIT Press. Previously Professor Auerswald was the CEO of Zilla Global LLC, a company whose mission was to enable ecosystems of opportunity centered around land.  

MipMap Technologies, a 50% partner is Geodetic.ai, had 25 years of experience employing 400+ qualified staff members in the acquisition and visualization of geospatial data. MipMap is specialized in the following areas: 

• 2D / 3D Digital Mapping by Terrestrial Techniques  

• 3D Aerial Mapping (Optical & Radar)

• Generation of Object / Mesh Based Digital Twins & Applications

• INDOORS Applications

• GIS Establishment and Applications 

While the 50% partner in Geodetic.ai, MipMap Technologies, has more than two decades of experience with the acquisition and visualization of geospatial data, the integration of crowdsourced data into a digital twin is a new technical area of work that is in the prototype stage. Successful deployment in the context of land registry further requires expertise in public policy, business strategy, and cultural anthropology. Successful integration of these capacities necessitated the creation of a new business entity, which is Geodetic.ai.

The of Geodetic.ai depends on deep cross-disciplinary integration at the technical frontier. This is precisely the sort of work that has made MIT the leading hub globally of learning, research, and problem solving relating to technology in the service of society. Acceptance into Solve will provide our team with deeper access to the network of Solve supporters and follow Solvers to make our undertaking successful.