Geo-Fencing Model for Real-time Querying of Land Status in Njoro, Kenya

Land is a vital asset for societal and economic resilience in many developing countries. In Kenya, the rate of land subdivision has accelerated with the rapid increase in population. Continuous urbanization and availability of arable land in the Njoro urban area of Nakuru county, the study site, have led to fast changes in ownership and land subdivision. This has put immense pressure on the land registry and posed a challenge to landowners wishing to manage their parcels. Socioeconomic and political implications of land ownership make it imperative to innovate a transparent system that will enable users locate their land using GPS, monitor future land subdivision, control fraud in the land registry and store electronic logs of historical land processing. The current research work set out to develop such a mechanism that provides real-time information to landowners, buyers and other stakeholders. The tasks were to map the cadastral map of Njoro area onto a geographic information system (GIS) and allocate each portion of land with a centroid for storing size and location information. Electronic green cards were generated for each parcel for logging land status- and ownership changes. A weighted spatial regression model assessed the factors influencing land subdivision and discovered that proximity to schools, shopping centers and major roads were highly significant. It is expected that results of this research will advise policy formulation in the Kenyan land registry and minimize the fraud and corruption that accompany manual management of land records.