News in 2013

STDM – Introduction to a pro-poor land information system

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 2013

On 23rd September 2013 the Social Tenure Domain Model has been introduced in Malaysia. The pro-poor land information system was welcomed by a group of 35 land professionals and experts. Most of the participants were from Malaysia but the event also attracted participants from other countries.

The Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) is a concept and tool developed by UN Habitat Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) in close co-operation with FIG. It builds on the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM). STDM is a new way of thinking in support to poverty alleviation and in serving the needs of the poor related to tenure security and land issues.

The Social Tenure Domain Model is highly flexible and can include all people to land relationships: formal, informal and customary. The land-objects concerned can be represented in the system as points (to identify structures in slums), as a set of lines or as polygons. The parties concerned can be persons, groups of persons, co-operations or other entities. Overlapping claims can be included. Identification of objects can be done from imagery or from other source documents and photos.


Eva-Maria Unger from the FIG Young Surveyors Network opened the event and explained the activities of the network and gave a general introduction of the event. The STDM concept was briefly introduced by Christiaan Lemmen. Focus in this introduction was on the representation of spatial units. Mr John Gitau introduced the software tool and guided through the installation processes. Together with John the participants walked through the functionalities and prepared data sets: names and ID’s of parties and spatial units – linked by social tenure relationships. Further functionalities like digitizing and document management were explained in the afternoon session. Throughout the day the participants have been assisted during the application by Rohan Bennett.

The day was closed with a lively discussion on the usability of STDM for different stakeholders and a general feedback on the concept and the tool itself. FIG President Teo CheeHai once more highlighted the importance of the STDM. All participants received a certificate for their participation in this STDM - Introduction to a pro-poor land information system event.

The event was organised in conjunction with the 5th International Workshop on the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM2013), held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 24th and 25th of September 2013.

The organisation was possible with the support of UN-Habitat and FIG; the University of Technology Malaysia (UTM), the Department of Survey and Mapping Malaysia (JUPEM), the Association of Authorised Land Surveyors Malaysia (PEJUTA); the University of Twente (ITC), Delft University of Technology and Kadaster, Netherlands.

Many thanks to Prof Alias Abdul Rahman and Nur Zurairah Binti Abdul Halim, from UTM and to their team ‎of young surveyors in Malaysia for their excellent support and help in the organisation of this successful day!

Eva-Maria Unger, FIG Young Surveyors Network
John Gitau, UN-Habitat/GLTN
Christiaan Lemmen, Kadaster/ITC Twente University

September 2013


The participants at the event


Lively discussions between the participants


The FIG Young Surveyors Network Malaysia with the Organising Team of the event

24 September 2013