Development of GNSS Guidelines for Cadastral Surveying in Botswana : Challenges and Potentials

Sammanfattning: In recent years a Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS)-network of more than 50 reference stations (with more on the way) have been set up extending over the whole southern African country of Botswana. This has opened up for new and improved possibilities of implementing the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technique in surveying practice. Cadastral surveying, the demarcation and registration of plots in a land registry, in Botswana is characterised by non-uniform methods with the lack of standardised documents. Authorities in Botswana already include the GNSS technique in the cadastre process but guidelines remain to be formulated. This research aims to establish a suggestion to new guidelines for GNSS measurements in cadastral surveying in Botswana by adapting international guidelines to Botswana use. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with personnel at different surveying institutions in Botswana together with a literature study of three existing international guidelines and scientific articles concerning GNSS and cadastral surveying. The international guidelines of choice were from Sweden, Australia and the United Kingdom (UK). During the process a thorough review of challenges and potentials of introducing new guidelines were. The results show that the surveying community in Botswana is facing several challenges at the moment. The challenges was categorised within three groups. The first group named ‘challenges related to the lack of standards’ contains challenges such as the lack of unity throughout the sector and the fact that it is difficult to refer to what is right and wrong. The second group, ‘technological challenges’, contains challenges such as infrastructural faults and the shortage of modern instruments. The last group of challenges ‘institutional challenges’ describes problems associated to inadequate cooperation and resistance towards change. There are also several potentials to talk about that Botswana would be able take part of if guidelines were introduced. Among them were improved educational systems and consistency within the sector.