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Proposed by: Nicole Wynands
Contact (name, email, phone, skype): Nicole Wynands, nicolewynands@gmail.com, nwynands
Best way and times to contact during RHoK 2.0 Dec 4/5 2010: email
Survivors sometimes return to their property after a disaster and find someone else living there who claims to be the legal owner. There may be no way to proof land ownership since there either is no official title to the land, or the paper title and even the digital record the local administration got destroyed or lost during the event.
After the Haiti earthquake, survivors moved into empty homes that were still habitable. The legal owners of these homes had a hard time claiming their property rights since paperwork was lost or forged.
In the case of the Pakistan floods, affected people did not want to leave their homes before or during the flood out of fear that they would lose not only their posessions but also their home and property, thus prefering to stay in harms way.
Problem: Emanuel is teaching at a school in a neighboring community when an earthquake hit. The bridge that connected his place of work to his home got destroyed and it takes him a day to find his way home. His house did not sustain much damage, but he finds a stranger occupying it who claimes it has always been his home and threatens Emanuel to leave the property. The police has no way of verifying who the legal owner is(and other problems to deal with anyway), since Emanuel can not produce the land title, which is lost under rubble. So the police assumes that the current inhabitat is the rightful owner and decides not enforce Emanuel's poroperty rights.
Before the earthquake, Emanuel registered his property in a secure online database by entering his title information and registration number and submitting a certified copy of the title and/or the cadastre map that is marking his property. He received a password to access the information through an application he downloaded to his smart phone and the official database website. He made sure to share the password with his family to give all stakeholders access to the information. After the earthquake hit and Emanuel found a squatter in his home, he was able to proof to the police that it was indeed his property by showing them the legal information on his phone, which led the police to the removal of the squatter.
Legal issues (no registry of property ownership, no titles or no cadastre map), unclear ownership, security of information from identity theft, information verification, database ownership (public or private?), need for access to internet, ownership of a smartphone necessary for app, cost of service should be minimal.
Burried or hidden digital markers of a property contain records of ownership and can only be reprogrammed remotely by the database company after verifying a valid transfer of ownership. The data can be retrieved by the owner through a smart phone app or the companies website.
This app could be promoted and/or maintained by the government, civil society organizations like community groups or NGOs, or the private sector.
There are publicly owned digital land registries, but they are not user controlled, too sophisticated and comprehensive, and are not readily accessible by property owners on the spot.